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Polizeigewalt, Beissattacken und überfüllte Gefängnisse – das Europäische Komitee zur Verhütung von Folter zieht nach einem Besuch in der Westschweiz eine erschütternde Bilanz.

Der Russe Daniil Medwedew, dreimaliger Finalist an den Australian Open, benötigt fünf Sätze gegen den Thai Kasidit Samrej, die Nummer 416 der Welt.

Seit der sowjetischen Besatzung sind Estland, Lettland und Litauen per Stromkabel mit dem russischen Festland verbunden – Anfang Februar wollen sie sich endgültig trennen.

Der Zürcher FDP-Politiker Martin Farner soll während der mehrtägigen Budgetsitzung des Kantonsrats betrunken Auto gefahren sein. Die Staatsanwaltschaft hat Kenntnis «vom Verdacht auf Verstoss gegen das Strassenverkehrsgesetz».

Am Dienstag startet die Handball-WM in Norwegen, Kroatien und Dänemark. Die Nati greift am Mittwoch ins Geschehen ein. Blick beantwortet vor dem Turnierstart die wichtigsten Fragen.

TikTok droht das Aus in den USA: 170 Millionen Nutzer sind betroffen. Die chinesische Regierung diskutiert den Verkauf an Tech-Milliardär Elon Musk. Eine Zusammenlegung mit der Plattform X könnte Tiktok retten.

Sensationeller Rekord bei der Vendée Globe: Charlie Dalin umrundet die Welt in nur 64 Tagen. Der Franzose unterbietet die bisherige Bestzeit um fast zehn Tage und gewinnt das härteste Segelrennen der Welt.

Americas The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) seeks to develop quantum sensors for moving military platforms. Quantum sensors use quantum mechanics to sense minute variances in motion and electric and magnetic fields, achieving greater accuracy than conventional sensors. In technical terms, they extract information from individual atoms rather than from a collection of atoms and are less vulnerable to signal jamming and other electromagnetic interference that traditional light- and sound-based data sensors are vulnerable to. The Marine Corps has awarded Forterra a contract to integrate its autonomy package on the Remotely Operated Ground Unit for Expeditionary Fires ground vehicle, the Pentagon’s first-ever production contract for off-road autonomous driving capability. The company’s advanced stack and AutoDrive system gives the ROGUE Fires vehicle – built by Oshkosh Defense – off-road, self-driving technology in “nearly any environment,” which moves “beyond Leader-Follower capabilities,” Forterra said in a Jan. 13 statement. Leader-Follower technology uses a lead vehicle to guide other unmanned vehicles behind it. Middle East & Africa Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has introduced a new loitering munition, reportedly capable of reaching a range of 20 kilometers. Dubbed the “Razvan,” the kamikaze drone was unveiled during the recent Payambar-e Azam (The Great Prophet) 19 […]

Die Britin Bonnie Blue sorgt mit einem Sex-Weltrekord für Schlagzeilen. Das Onlyfans-Model will innert 12 Stunden mit 1057 Männern Sex gehabt haben. Die Aktion stösst in sozialen Medien auf Ablehnung.

Aujourd'hui dans l'Expresso : le rôle incertain de l'UE dans les négociations de paix en Ukraine, la Suède s'apprête à développer une technologie de drones en « essaims », la biomasse durable, sujet phare du Forum mondial de l'alimentation et de l’agriculture à Berlin.

Erschwinglicher Wohnraum ist ein Grund zur Sorge in Spanien. Ministerpräsident Pedro Sánchez kündigte deshalb härte Steuermaßnahmen an - zum einen für Ausländer, die einen Zweitwohnsitz in der Sonne kaufen wollen, aber auch für Immobilienbesitzer, die an Touristen vermieten. 

Ein 57-jähriger Arbeiter ist am Montag auf einer Tunnelbaustelle in Rothenbrunnen GR eingeklemmt worden. Seine Kollegen befreiten ihn. Ein Rettungsteam brachte den mittelschwer Verletzten ins Spital nach Thusis.

Le président ukrainien Volodymyr Zelensky a réagi à l’invitation du Premier ministre slovaque Robert Fico à venir en Slovaquie pour évoquer le transit du gaz, en invitant ce dernier à se rendre en Ukraine à la place.

Written by Polona Car with Filippo Cassetti.

Dark patterns are deceptive techniques used by online platforms to manipulate users’ behaviour, often without their knowledge or consent. The EU regulatory framework against dark patterns is fragmented and lacks a unified legal definition. This can lead to legal uncertainty and inconsistent enforcement. Stakeholders and academics are calling for clearer definitions, stronger safeguards, and more effective enforcement of existing laws.

What are dark patterns?

Dark patterns or deceptive patterns can be described as ‘tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things that you didn’t mean to, like buying or signing up for something’. They are based on harmful online choice architecture. Their purpose is to influence a broad spectrum of consumer decisions, impeding the consumers’ ability to make informed choices. They intentionally affect users’ behaviour to manipulate them. Some dark patterns are designed to make the person feel compelled to purchase, either by the design of the website or by the ‘opportunity’ of the deal. Examples include fake urgency (for instance fake countdown timers) to pressure user action, disguised advertisement, and emotional manipulation to make users question their actions.

Absence of a single legal definition

There is no common definition of dark patterns in the EU legal framework. The Digital Services Act (DSA) describes them in its recital 67 as ‘practices that materially distort or impair, either on purpose or in effect, the ability of recipients of the service to make autonomous and informed choices or decisions’. According to the DSA, these practices are to be prohibited. The recent fitness check of EU consumer law on digital fairness defines dark patterns as ‘unfair commercial practices deployed through the structure, design or functionalities of digital interfaces or system architecture that can influence consumers to make decisions they would not have taken otherwise’. The various definitions nevertheless have two key features in common: the manipulative or deceptive nature of the practice and the resulting negative or harmful outcome. As this description is quite broad, to be able to determine whether a particular practice should be classified as a dark pattern, there are numerous guidelines and practical recommendations to consider.

Complexity of the existing legislative framework

Dark patterns were introduced into the EU’s legal framework by the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (UCPD). However, the UCPD does not use the term ‘dark patterns’. What it prohibits are ‘misleading’ and ‘aggressive’ commercial practices. The UCPD protects consumers against unfair business-to-consumer (B2C) commercial practices in advertising, sales and after-sales. To this ‘first level’ of protection, a series of subsequent legal acts were added, offering protection where the UCPD failed to offer adequate protection against new players and technological advances: the UCPD clearly forbids only a limited number of dark patterns that are mentioned in its Annex I and these prohibitions do not deal with digital interfaces.

The above-mentioned fitness check raised concerns about how Article 25 of the DSA interacts with other EU legal acts. While it prohibits online platforms from using dark patterns, it excludes practices covered by the UCPD and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This means that if a dark pattern of an online platform provider violates the GDPR, its legality will be assessed according to the requirements of the GDPR, not the DSA. This situation creates legal uncertainty. Although the GDPR does not address dark patterns explicitly, particular techniques to obtain consent from data users could be interpreted as such. This leaves space for interpretation that could minimise the impact of the DSA.

Similarly, the UCPD has such a broad scope, covering all B2C relations, that the space left for applying the DSA is limited. Consequently, the clear and general prohibition of dark patterns in the DSA may still lead to a reliance on the UCDP’s case-by-case analysis. As a solution, the fitness check report proposed adding specific prohibitions of dark patterns to the UCPD. This could be done by expanding the UCPD’s Annex I with explicit prohibitions addressing online interfaces.

Parliament’s December 2023 resolution on addictive design of online service and consumer protection arrived at similar conclusions. It called on the Commission to close regulatory gaps relating to dark patterns, and strengthen transparency provisions, as the current rules were not sufficient to mitigate adverse effects. It argued that several dark patterns could already be addressed under the current list in Annex I of the UCPD. Nevertheless, it asked the Commission to assess the need to extend Annex I as a matter of urgency, to prohibit the most harmful practices. Parliament considered that development of ethical and fair digital products free of dark patterns should constitute reasonable professional diligence.

Other legal acts also address dark patterns. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act introduces new prohibitions on dark patterns, without mentioning the term specifically. The AI Act prohibits subliminal techniques, purposefully manipulative or deceptive techniques or use of AI systems that exploit vulnerabilities based on age, disability or a specific social or economic situation (Articles 5(1)(a) and (b)) that could cause significant harm. Unlike the DSA, the AI Act requires case-by-case interpretation of specific terms such as ‘subliminal technique’ and ‘purposefully’ manipulative or deceptive. However, exploitation of some vulnerabilities under the AI Act (e.g. emotion-recognition) is classified as high-risk AI, but not prohibited.

For its part, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) includes an anti-circumvention rule (Article 13) aimed at capturing dark patterns used by gatekeepers to influence consumer decisions unlawfully. The Data Act mentions the prohibition of the use of dark patterns in relation to third parties and data holders when they are designing their digital interfaces (Recital 38). These should not be designed in a way to make decisions unduly difficult for the users. Specific prohibition of dark patterns was introduced for financial services, with the 2023 amendment to the Consumer Rights Directive (CRD). The amendment (Article 16(e)) prohibits traders from applying dark patterns when they are concluding financial services contracts at a distance. This variety of provisions used in different legal acts intended to address dark patterns could create a lack of coherence in implementation. This was outlined in the above-mentioned fitness check report, which established a need for further action. Based on this evaluation, the Commission announced a public consultation in preparation for the upcoming Digital Fairness Act in 2025, to remedy the situation.

Academic views

Inge Graef warns of risk of inconsistencies, leading to under-enforcement owing to the fragmented EU regulatory framework for dark patterns. Martin Brenncke underlines the difficulty of effective regulation as dark patterns act in between legitimate persuasive techniques and illegal methods of coercion and manipulation. In addition, dark patterns take advantage of consumer behaviour bias, while EU consumer legislation assumes that consumers are rational economic actors. Mark Leiser and Cristiana Santos underline the importance of clear labelling of dark patterns in enforcement, and publicising such actions to discourage deception. In addition, they highlight the need to update the EU acquis constantly, to confront emerging prohibited designs and forms of manipulation (for instance hyper-nudging).

Stakeholder positions

During the public consultation for the digital fairness fitness check, stakeholders expressed concern about the current legal framework, citing ambiguity, complexity and ineffective enforcement. A majority of respondents advocated enhanced protection against dark patterns and similar deceptive practices, recommending clearer and stronger safeguards. They proposed, among other things, a comprehensive ban on dark patterns, clearer definitions of key concepts to reduce uncertainty, and the placing of a ‘fairness by design’ obligation on businesses.

The European Consumer Organisation, BEUC, recommended ensuring better enforcement against dark patterns and in particular, reviewing the UCPD and CRD. For the two directives, BEUC proposed to introduce an anti-circumvention clause, modelled on the example introduced by the DMA. A March 2024 BEUC report proposed regulatory solutions, based on a horizontal principle of fairness by design.
Digital industry stakeholders meanwhile insist that a distinction must be drawn between deceptive practices and legitimate online persuasive methods, so as not to jeopardise innovation. In a recent report, Eurocommerce argued that dark partners are already sufficiently covered by existing legislation.

Read this ‘at a glance’ note on ‘Regulating dark patterns in the EU: Towards digital fairness‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

Die USA haben Serbien aufgefordert, den russischen Anteil an des Öl-Unternehmens NIS vollständig abzuschaffen. Kürzlich eingeführte US-Sanktionen gegen das Land ließen sich so vermeiden, erklärte der stellvertretende US-Außenminister.

Après les manifestations qui se sont déroulées tout au long du week-end en Italie, le gouvernement a demandé une approbation rapide du projet de loi sur la sécurité, qui a suscité des réactions de la part de l’opposition, du Conseil de l’Europe et des familles des victimes de la mafia et d’attaques terroristes.

Thierry Burkarts Ankündigung, er wolle sein Amt als FDP-Chef spätestens 2027 abgeben, sorgt in der Partei offenbar für Aufregung. Politiker und Politikerinnen bangen, dass er schon vorher als Präsident aufhören könnte.

Alors que la guerre en Ukraine donne lieu à de nouvelles tactiques sur le champ de bataille, la Suède s'apprête à tester un nouveau logiciel qu’elle a mis au point pour coordonner jusqu’à 100 drones en « essaims ».

Kamal Adwan Hospital faced several Israeli military bombardments. Credit: World Health Organization (WHO) December 2024

By Norman Solomon
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Jan 14 2025 (IPS)

A few days before the end of 2024, the independent magazine +972 reported that “Israeli army forces stormed the Kamal Adwan Hospital compound in Beit Lahiya, culminating a nearly week-long siege of the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza.”

While fire spread through the hospital, its staff issued a statement saying that “surgical departments, laboratory, maintenance, and emergency units have been completely burned,” and patients were “at risk of dying at any moment.”

The magazine explained that “the assault on medical facilities in Beit Lahiya is the latest escalation in Israel’s brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, which over the last three months forcibly displaced the vast majority of Palestinians living in the area.”

The journalism from +972 — in sharp contrast to the dominant coverage of the Gaza war from U.S. media — has provided clarity about real-time events, putting them in overall context rather than episodic snippets.

+972 Magazine is the work of Palestinian and Israeli journalists who describe their core values as “a commitment to equity, justice, and freedom of information” — which necessarily means “accurate and fair journalism that spotlights the people and communities working to oppose occupation and apartheid.” But the operative values of mainstream U.S. news outlets have been very different.

Key aspects of how the U.S. establishment has narrated the “war on terror” for more than two decades were standard in American media and politics from the beginning of the Gaza war in October 2023. For instance:

**·Routine discourse avoided voices condemning the U.S. government for its role in the slaughter of civilians.

**The U.S. ally usually eluded accountability for its high-tech atrocities committed from the air.

**Civilian deaths in Gaza were habitually portrayed as unintended.

**Claims that Israel was aiming to minimize civilian casualties were normally taken at face value.

** Media coverage and political rhetoric stayed away from acknowledging that Israel’s actions might fit into such categories as “mass murder” or “terrorism.”

**Overall, news media and U.S. government officials emitted a mindset that Israeli lives really mattered a lot more than Palestinian lives.

The Gaza war has received a vast amount of U.S. media attention, but how much it actually communicated about the human realities was a whole other matter. The belief or unconscious notion that news media were conveying war’s realities ended up obscuring those realities all the more. And journalism’s inherent limitations were compounded by media biases.

During the first five months of the war, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post applied the word “brutal” or its variants far more often to Palestinians (77 percent) than to Israelis (23 percent).

The findings, in a study by Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), pointed to an imbalance that occurred “even though Israeli violence was responsible for more than 20 times as much loss of life.” News articles and opinion pieces were remarkably in the same groove; “the lopsided rate at which ‘brutal’ was used in op-eds to characterize Palestinians over Israelis was exactly the same as the supposedly straight news stories.”

Despite exceptional coverage at times, what was most profoundly important about war in Gaza — what it was like to be terrorized, massacred, maimed and traumatized — remained almost entirely out of view.

Gradually, surface accounts reaching the American public came to seem repetitious and normal. As death numbers kept rising and months went by, the Gaza war diminished as a news topic, while most talk shows seldom discussed it.

As with the slaughter via bombardment, the Israeli-U.S. alliance treated the increasing onset of starvation, dehydration, and fatal disease as a public-relations problem. Along the way, official pronouncements — and the policies they tried to justify — were deeply anchored in the unspoken premise that some lives really matter and some really don’t.

The propaganda approach was foreshadowed on October 8, 2023, with Israel in shock from the atrocities that Hamas had committed the previous day. “This is Israel’s 9/11,” the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations told reporters in New York, and he repeated: “This is Israel’s 9/11.” Meanwhile, in a PBS News Weekend interview, Israel’s ambassador to the United States declared: “This is, as someone said, our 9/11.”

What was sinister about proclaiming “Israel’s 9/11” was what happened after America’s 9/11. Wearing the cloak of victim, the United States proceeded to use the horrible tragedy that occurred inside its borders as an open-ended reason to kill in the name of retaliation, self-protection, and, of course, the “war on terror.”

As Israel’s war on Gaza persisted, the explanations often echoed the post-9/11 rationales for the “war on terror” from the U.S. government: authorizing future crimes against humanity as necessary in the light of certain prior events.

Reverberation was in the air from late 2001, when the Pentagon’s leader Donald Rumsfeld asserted that “responsibility for every single casualty in this war, whether they’re innocent Afghans or innocent Americans, rests at the feet of the al Qaeda and the Taliban.”
After five weeks of massacring Palestinian people, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “any civilian loss is a tragedy” — and quickly added that “the blame should be placed squarely on Hamas.”

The licenses to kill were self-justifying. And they had no expiration date.

This article is adapted from the afterword in the paperback edition of Norman Solomon’s latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine (The New Press).

This was originally published by MediaNorth.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Il est né à Skopje et se bat depuis 2012 en Syrie sous le nom d'Abu Qatada al-Albani, où il dirige le bataillon Xhemati Alban, qui rassemble des Albanais des Balkans. Cadre du Front Al-Nosrah, Abdul Samrez Jashari vient d'être nommé colonel par les nouvelles autorités de Damas.

- Articles / Courrier des Balkans, Défense, police et justice, Balkans Syrie, Macédoine du Nord, Kosovo, Une - Diaporama