Simplifying is not clarifying

Europe’s 2026 is the year of simplification. The Digital Omnibus on the AI Act is in force, the one on data is being negotiated, and the Digital Fairness Act, the expected proposal on dark patterns, addictive design and unfair personalisation, has not yet been presented. In March, over two hundred organisations wrote to the Commission a sentence that stayed with me: “‘simplification’ should not become a synonym for deregulation.”

They are right. But I think the problem lies further upstream: we confuse two words.

Simple and clear are not synonyms

A simple rule has few elements. A clear rule is understood by those who must apply it or bear it. The two often coincide, but not always.

“Consent must be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous” is a simple rule. It produced the cookie banner: the least clear system in digital life. The simplicity of the norm moved all the complexity into design, that is, into the hands of those with an interest in exploiting it.

Conversely, a longer rule can be much clearer: “the reject button has the same size, colour and position as the accept button”. More words, less room for manipulation.

Complexity does not disappear, it moves

That is the lesson from measuring documents with the LX Complexity Score. Remove complexity from one place and it moves elsewhere. Shorten the notice and complexity ends up in the links. Reduce the duty and it ends up in guidelines. Deregulate and it ends up in litigation, where the weakest pay for it.

Article 2 of the Habeas Mentem Charter says: “Complexity may not become a tool of exclusion, nor an advantage for whoever produces it.” That is the test I would apply to every simplification proposal. Not how many pages it removes, but who pays for the complexity that remains.

What the Digital Fairness Act should do

If and when it arrives, I expect it to do three things differently:

1. regulate effects, not forms. Instead of listing dark patterns (outdated in six months), establish that an interface may not make a choice unfavourable to the business more costly, in time or effort, than the favourable one;
2. reverse the burden. When a decision is mediated by a designed environment, its designer should show it does not work against the person. That is Article 10 of the Charter, and it is not utopian: it is how accountability already works in the GDPR;
3. accept measurement. The comprehensibility of interfaces can be observed and verified. A rule that recognises this gives authorities a tool and businesses a target.

A note on the market

Those working across the EU, UK and US already see it: the FTC and the UK CMA act on effects, not lists. Europe risks arriving last with the oldest tool. For businesses, the practical advice is not to wait: design interfaces that pass a symmetry test between accepting and rejecting. It costs little. And it will almost certainly be tomorrow’s rule.