India, Sept. 30 -- Just last week, ecommerce major Amazon agreed to pay $2.5 Bn to settle a lawsuit filed by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which alleged that the company "knowingly duped" millions of people into enrolling for Amazon Prime membership through "manipulative, coercive, or deceptive user-interface designs" aka dark patterns.

But in India, one of the largest ecommerce markets in the world, such rulings are rare. If anything, companies often claim they have self-audited themselves.

Like Flipkart did in July 2025 after the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) directed all major ecommerce platforms to carry out an audit to identify and eliminate dark patterns. But claiming this is one thing, actually sticking to...