Artificial Intelligence, and its application by online platforms and social media, enables complex data analysis and automated decision-making on a new scale. In turn, this development poses novel security risks for consumers due to the endemic collection of data and analysis of user behavior, accompanied by the personalization of interfaces, search results, and advertisements, to name a few. These security risks primarily affect vulnerable consumers and, at times, include the unlawful use and combination of data to position behavior-based content and design misleading, manipulative, or deceptive processes.

Also, fraudulent parties use data-driven, algorithmic processes to deceive consumers with targeted advertising. Consumer protection groups address these unfair business practices like data-driven, algorithmic processes around decision-making, ranking, and process design at the European level, with a focus on problematizing dark patterns and behavior-based advertising. Legal options for prosecuting unfair business practices as applied in the context of dark patterns or behavioral advertising are currently limited. Law enforcement registers an emerging need for methods and tools to verify the implementation of the numerous legislative initiatives on data-based, algorithmic approaches to ranking, recommendation, and process design.

The Platform Compliance Study project is a comprehensive analysis of unfair business practices by platforms and applications relevant to Austrian consumers. In this context, the project investigates these phenomena and related trends as well as possible ways to measure these practices to form a comprehensive basis for legal prosecution. 

This includes (a) The collection and analysis of existing tools and methods for documenting and gathering evidence of dark patterns and behavioral advertising for use by consumer agencies and consumer rights organizations. (b) The exemplary application of these tools and methods on online platforms and mobile applications relevant for Austrian consumers to make dark patterns and behavior-based advertising visible for stakeholder education and consumer education. (c) A feasibility study of a tool for the detection and documentation of behavioral advertising.

PCS is funded by the KIRAS security research funding programme of the Federal Ministry of Finance.