Prime Video, now with ads: Today's digital citizen is paying more for less

Indian Express

4 days ago

Written by Mrinalini Naik
The rapid growth of India's digital ecosystem over the last two decades has transformed how millions of people communicate, shop, learn, and entertain themselves. As India continues its digital surge, a growing number of users are facing a strange irony: The more dominant a platform becomes, the worse the experience gets.
E-platforms once promised access, speed, convenience, control, a diverse selection and affordability. For a while, they delivered. But somewhere along the way, the user became less of a priority and more of a target. What we're witnessing now is the decay of digital platforms, a process that has earned a fitting name: 'Enshitification'. Coined by Canadian-British journalist Cory Doctorow, the term refers to how online platforms degrade over time: First serving users, then business clients, and eventually just themselves.
For instance, recently, Amazon Prime notified its members that starting June 17, 2025, Prime Video will include advertisements, and if the members want to have an 'ad-free experience' on the OTT platform, they'll have to pay an additional fee on top of the standard Prime membership charges.
Similarly, a few days back, both Zomato Gold and Swiggy One updated their terms to include 'rain-surge fees' even for premium subscribers. What began as loyalty programs offering free delivery and priority service now resemble subscription traps that add cost while subtracting value.
These are not isolated incidents but part of a deliberate business model shift. As user growth plateaus, platforms turn inward, optimising for revenue per user, not user experience. Loyalty is no longer rewarded, it's priced. Coupons dry up for returning customers, free delivery becomes elusive, and core features are throttled behind new paywalls. Customer care has become bot-driven, and live human support is hidden behind multiple steps or unavailable.
This phenomenon is plainly visible across India's digital ecosystem. Platforms like Spotify and YouTube constantly flood users with unskippable ads to push premium plans. From e-commerce to grocery and food delivery apps, users are now confronted with an escalating mix of non-negotiable 'platform fees' or 'handling charges' on every order. Multiple layers of fees, like delivery charges for smaller baskets, packaging fees, and surge pricing during peak hours, are added, and membership terms shrink in value over time.
If this sounds like paying more to get less, that's because it is. The logic behind this model is simple: Once platforms scale to achieve market dominance and user dependence to become indispensable, monetisation intensifies. Charges once optional become default.
However, 'enshitification' is not just limited to fees or the push for paid subscriptions; it's about all the systemic processes that degrade user experience. One such process is device-based price discrimination done by platforms. In 2025, a storm of user complaints and reports revealed that many platforms, specifically quick commerce and ride-hailing apps, were charging more to iPhone users than to Android users for the same route and time, based solely on device data. This profiling, based purely on perceived purchasing power, occurs without consent, transparency, or recourse. From the consumer perspective, it raises serious concerns about fairness, especially in the absence of clear disclosure by platforms.
Another issue is that platforms are increasingly relying on dark patterns, that is, manipulative UI/UX to trick users into unwanted choices. Some of these patterns are: Creating 'false urgency', where fake limited stock countdowns push users into hasty decisions; 'basket sneaking', which involves adding unwanted items to the cart or auto-ticking donation boxes without consent; 'drip pricing', where hidden charges appear only at checkout; 'search bias', when platforms prioritise paid listings or ads over more relevant results burying small or local businesses that may offer better value or service; 'nagging', where platforms send continuous notifications or requests to purchase unintended goods or services; and 'subscription trap', making cancellation of paid membership difficult and complex. These patterns are inherently opaque, designed to mislead and extract more without the user actively realising it.
To address this issue in 2023, the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) issued guidelines under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, identifying a range of such manipulative practices (dark patterns) for prevention and regulation of those. However, the non-binding nature of Annexure-I (which provides specified dark patterns illustrations) offers guidance and not interpretation of the law. This grants the CCPA scope to offer new explanations of the mentioned practices, creating uncertainty and ambiguity in enforcement procedures. This provides a loophole for the digital platforms to continue indulging in dark patterns.
Currently, India's legal framework for digital platforms addresses several important areas through the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 and E-Commerce Rules, 2020. These mandate transparency in pricing and prohibit unfair trade practices; the Information Technology Rules, 2021 requires platforms to publish terms of use and establish grievance redress mechanisms; the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 ensures user consent and privacy; and the Competition Act,2002, prohibits practices like predatory pricing or market dominance abuse. However, none of these laws directly regulate user experience or interface design. Additionally, all these regulations are reactive, addressing harm after it occurs.
What India needs right now is a forward-looking, ex-ante regulatory approach, inspired by global standards for governing user experience on digital platforms. Much like the EU's Digital Markets Act, the proposed Digital Competition Bill in India, if passed, will be an ex-ante regulation addressing some issues like self-preferencing of products by platforms, restricting users from using third-party applications on their core digital services or tying-bundling of non-essential services to those demanded by users. Though it's a welcome move to improve user experience to some extent, to truly address 'enshitification', India still needs legal frameworks on design and algorithm transparency standards, clearer definitions and binding regulations on dark patterns and mandatory UX audits for large platforms.
The writer is an advocate at the Supreme Court of India