Depends how you look at it. Distinguish dark UI pattern from the traditional confidence trick please. The same abuse of trust and guided decision making whilst

Depends how you look at it. Distinguish dark UI pattern from the traditional confidence trick please. The same abuse of trust and guided decision making whilst carefully trying to stay just outside the line marked fraud. My wife is tech literate, and has put up with my complaining of countless patterns and tech developments over the years, but still managed to get signed up for a subscription when she thought she'd just bought a pair of shoes. A little search showed it a very common issue a few years ago. Maybe it is still. It's all very well not wanting to make life difficult for startups, but what of the flipping public? I don't think it reasonable to expect people examine every pixel of every page just to avoid getting scammed. The startups, even large ones, are often as bad as the worst snake oil selling SEO and internet marketers. It's those startups who made regulation increasingly inevitable. We've had 40 years since Thatcher and Reagan started working to make regulation unacceptable and unfashionable. The first 10 years probably did improve things, the next 30 has been too much and caused countless scandals, banking crises and what not.