> In a sane market, those dark patterns would be defeated by competition, but there is a distressing lack of sane markets today

Did you miss the part where the parent said "I’ve recently switched to Facebook Dating"?

It sounds nice to make "dark patterns" illegal, but what that means is that its arbitrary since you can't define it. Discretion is fine, but you have to be fine with [bad politician] appointing his minions to oversee the process.

For something simple like "pick up my garbage in a regular cadence", I wouldn't really care if it's Biden, Trump, Obama, Clinton or any reasonable politician so I'm fine with ceding that authority to the state. But when it comes to something like social media regulation, I don't trust politicians.