NOVA’s 38 Rules to End Dark Patterns and Shield Portugal’s Gig Workers

The NOVA School of Law has distilled 38 concrete ideas for EU lawmakers, a package that – if adopted – will reshape how every Portuguese citizen clicks, scrolls, and works online.

Why This Matters

• Fewer “Accept-All” traps – Brussels is moving to outlaw dark-pattern consent boxes as early as autumn.

• Human review of algorithmic firings – the new Platform Work Directive forces a real person to sign off on ride-hail account bans.

• Price personalisation in the spotlight – retailers must soon reveal when a price is uniquely tailored to you.

• Stronger fines for Big Tech gatekeepers – non-compliance can reach 10% of global turnover under the DMA and the coming Digital Fairness Act.

The Survey Behind the Alarm Bells

Researchers at NOVA School of Law interviewed competition economists, privacy lawyers and start-ups rooted in Portugal’s growing tech scene. Two headline anxieties emerged: the market power of gatekeepers and the erosion of user autonomy. Respondents said manipulative interface design, opaque contracts and data-hungry recommendation engines are "nudging" Portuguese users towards choices they would not make under fair conditions.

The panel delivered 38 proposals, from capping self-preferencing in app stores to forcing all platforms to serve plain-language contracts not exceeding the equivalent of two A4 pages.

Convergence With Brussels’ 2026 Agenda

Much of what the Lisbon scholars demand is already echoing through EU corridors:

• The Digital Services Act (DSA) is live and has already hit X (ex-Twitter) with a €120 M penalty for hidden ad tech.

• The companion Digital Markets Act (DMA) requires Alphabet, Meta and five other gatekeepers to open up data and interoperate messaging apps; first compliance audit lands in May.

• The AI Act becomes fully enforceable on 2 August 2026, classifying recommender systems for news feeds as “high-risk” AI.

• A brand-new Digital Fairness Act is expected by year-end to knit consumer law and dark-pattern bans into a single code.

Put together, these files convert Portugal’s existing consumer statutes into a pan-European shield against manipulative tech.

Dark Patterns at the Top of the Hit List

Experts rated a crackdown on “dark patterns” as the most urgent fix. Under Article 25 DSA, any button formatting that steers a user to share more data than strictly necessary becomes illegal. The forthcoming Fairness Act will go further by tackling:

• Pre-ticked boxes for newsletter signup.

• Labyrinthine cancellation flows for streaming services.

• Drip-pricing that hides mandatory fees until checkout.

Portuguese regulators – namely the Autoridade de Segurança Alimentar e Económica (ASAE) and the Comissão Nacional de Proteção de Dados (CNPD) – are preparing joint guidance so local SMEs know how to redesign their sites before the rules bite.

Algorithmic Transparency Is No Longer Optional

Independent audits mandated by the DSA have exposed biased recommender engines that amplify conspiracy content. Seventeen Very Large Online Platforms received a “negative opinion” from external auditors in 2025. The survey calls for:

• public risk-assessment summaries in Portuguese,

• a right for researchers at public universities to download anonymised training data, and

• a traffic-light label showing whether the feed is ranked, random or strictly chronological.

Expect these demands to appear in the Commission’s 2026 review of the Transparency Database.

Gig Economy: Fair Pay, Human Oversight

Portugal hosts roughly 140 000 platform workers, from delivery couriers in Porto to freelance coders in Braga. The EU’s Platform Work Directive flips the burden: if an app directs your schedule, you’re presumed an employee. Respondents stress three priorities:

Collective bargaining rights to stabilise earnings.

Ban on automated terminations without a documented human appeal.

Mandatory disclosure when an algorithm scores performance or allocates shifts.

Ride-hail operator Bolt Portugal has already begun rewriting driver contracts to pre-empt litigation.

What This Means for Residents

• Consumers – Expect clearer cookie pop-ups and a one-click path to cancel subscriptions by early 2027. If a webshop tailors prices, it must tell you up front.

• SMEs & Start-ups – Any software that profiles users will need audit logs. Fines scale with global revenue, but micro-enterprises get a 2-year grace period under the AI Act.

• Gig Workers – You gain access to sick leave, paid holidays and workplace accident insurance once the employment presumption is transposed into Portuguese law (deadline: 2 Dec 2026). Keep screenshots; they are admissible evidence if a platform disputes your status.

• Investors – Compliance tech and algorithm-audit consultancies look set for double-digit growth as companies scramble to certify their systems.

What Comes Next

Brussels will publish the first DMA enforcement report in May 2026, setting the tone for penalties. A public consultation on the Digital Fairness Act is slated for the summer, and Portugal’s Ministry of Economy is forming a stakeholder task force to feed into the draft. By September, CNPD plans to issue sector-specific guidelines on acceptable AI use in customer service bots.

For now, the message from both the survey and the EU rule-book is blunt: design for fairness now or pay later.