Lawmakers around the country are crafting new laws to target "dark patterns" -- user interface designs that trick or coerce users into enabling cell phone location tracking, sharing browsing data, initiating automatic billing, or making whatever other choices their designers prefer. Dark patterns pose a serious problem. In their most aggressive forms, they interfere with human autonomy, undermine customers' evaluation and selection of products, and distort online markets for goods and services. Yet crafting legislation is a major challenge: Persuasion and deception are difficult to distinguish, and shifting tech trends present an ever-moving target. To address these challenges, this Article proposes leveraging state private law to define and track dark patterns as they evolve. Judge-crafted decisional law can respond quickly to new techniques, flexibly define the boundary between permissible and impermissible designs, and bolster state and federal regulatory enforcement efforts by quickly identifying those designs that most undermine user autonomy.

翻译：全美各地的立法者正在制定新法律，旨在针对“暗黑模式”——即通过用户界面设计诱骗或胁迫用户启用手机位置追踪、共享浏览数据、启动自动计费或作出设计者偏好的其他选择。暗黑模式构成了严重问题。在其最具侵略性的形式中，它们干扰人类自主权，削弱消费者对产品的评估与选择，扭曲商品和服务的在线市场。然而，立法是一项重大挑战：说服与欺骗难以区分，且不断变化的技术趋势使得目标始终处于移动状态。为应对这些挑战，本文提出利用州私法来定义并追踪暗黑模式的演化。法官制定的判例法能够快速响应新技术，灵活界定允许与不允许设计之间的边界，并通过迅速识别那些最严重削弱用户自主权的设计，加强州和联邦监管执法力度。