Scraping Dark Patterns in Cookie Consent: A Research Dataset

Scraping Dark Patterns in Cookie Consent: A Research Dataset Cookie consent banners have become a battleground for user privacy. Many sites use dark patterns — deceptive design choices that manipulate users into accepting tracking. In this guide, we'll build a scraper that analyzes cookie consent implementations across thousands of websites and identifies dark patterns systematically. What Are Cookie Consent Dark Patterns? Dark patterns in consent include: Pre-checked boxes — tracking enabled by default Asymmetric choices — "Accept All" is prominent, "Reject" is hidden Forced action — blocking content until you accept Confusing language — using double negatives or jargon Hidden settings — burying granular controls behind multiple clicks Building the Scraper We need JavaScript rendering to detect cookie banners since they're typically injected by third-party scripts. ScraperAPI handles headless rendering: import requests from bs4 import BeautifulSoup import re import json SCRAPER_API_KE