What is the Digital Fairness Act?

As digital platforms become ever more embedded in everyday life, the focus of regulation is beginning to shift. It is no longer just about protecting data — it is about something broader and more fundamental: fairness.

The emerging Digital Fairness Act, a forthcoming legislative proposal being developed by the European Commission, reflects this evolution. While still under development at EU level, it signals a move towards ensuring that digital services are not only compliant, but also transparent, clear, and fair in how they treat users.

Expected in 2026, the Digital Fairness Act is likely to introduce measures targeting dark patterns, influencer marketing, addictive product design, and unfair personalisation, particularly where these exploit user vulnerabilities. At the same time, it will seek to simplify obligations for businesses by bringing greater consistency to how consumer protection rules are applied in digital environments.

In the UK, there is no single equivalent piece of legislation. Instead, these issues are addressed across a number of frameworks, including the Consumer Rights Act 2015, the Online Safety Act, and the UK version of GDPR. While these frameworks provide important protections, they are fragmented across different areas of law and do not yet bring together a single, explicit concept of ‘fairness by design’ in the way the EU is now proposing. By contrast, the EU’s direction of travel is more explicit, bringing these strands together under a clearer, more proactive concept of ‘fairness by design’.

Within Scotland, particularly in areas such as public sector digital services and ethical data use frameworks, transparency and user trust are already central design principles. Although operating within the UK legal framework, the approach across both the public sector and wider digital ecosystem places a clear emphasis on transparency, ethical data use, and building trust with users. The focus is not just on meeting regulatory requirements, but on ensuring that digital services are understandable, responsible, and fair in practice.

For organisations, this signals a meaningful shift. It is no longer sufficient to say, “we are GDPR compliant.” Increasingly, the expectation is that digital services are designed in a way that users can understand, trust, and engage with confidently. Clarity, transparency, and fairness are becoming essential, not optional.

Unsurprisingly, the direction of travel is not without debate. Consumer protection organisations are calling for stronger and more explicit safeguards, while some digital platforms argue that existing legislation is already sufficient. However, political momentum is clearly building. The European Parliament has called for action on harmful design practices, and the Council of the European Union has highlighted the need for greater accountability, particularly in relation to influencer activity and its impact on younger audiences.

This suggests that the Digital Fairness Act is not simply another layer of regulation, but a broader rethinking of how digital environments should operate. Fairness, transparency, and user understanding are no longer secondary considerations, they are becoming central to how digital services are designed, evaluated, and trusted.

So the question is no longer just whether organisations are compliant, but whether they are genuinely fair, transparent, and deserving of user trust.