This Dagstuhl Seminar aims to enhance the collective understanding of changes in online tracking, advertising, and dark patterns within an interdisciplinary research community in Computer Science and Law. Following the success of the 2017 Dagstuhl Seminar “Online Privacy and Web Transparency” (Bielova, Laoutaris, Narayanan, and Nikiforakis), the new seminar will bring together experts to tackle novel challenges emerging from the shifting technological and regulatory landscape.

More than half a decade after the 2017 seminar, some of the familiar questions have resurfaced in new contexts, such as smart devices and augmented reality. The introduction of privacy regulations and enforcement regimes around the world has prompted and enabled a slew of new research. Meanwhile, browsers and mobile platforms have started shipping built-in anti-tracking features, and a once-in-a-generation redesign of the online advertising and tracking ecosystem is underway.

Spanning three days, the seminar will feature a variety of session formats including short talks, interactive demos, and moderated brainstorming sessions. Bringing together researchers and industry experts, the seminar will promote collaboration and advance research on these challenges, while also exploring future research directions. Topics to be discussed during the seminar include, but are not limited to the following:

• Online Tracking Beyond Cookies
  • How should online tracking research respond to fundamental changes in tracking mechanisms after the third-party cookie phaseout? Which techniques, tools, and methods could prove beneficial and are currently absent in researchers' toolboxes?
  • Do existing regulations provide sufficient protections against novel types of tracking and profiling? How can Computer Science research help regulators with enforcement of regulations, or with developing better regulations?
• Alternative Advertising Mechanisms
  • What are the potential abuses associated with the novel advertising mechanisms (e.g., Topics API, Protected Audience API), and what measures can be implemented to monitor and prevent them?
• Dark Patterns and Online Manipulation
  • What methods and strategies are effective for detecting privacy-related dark patterns in various contexts, and how do these dark patterns influence both immediate and future privacy decisions of users?

Creative Commons BY 4.0

Günes Acar, Nataliia Bielova, Zubair Shafiq, and Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius