[hiram112]

I can already imagine how these totally neutral "providers" like Google and Twitter would implement this, much like Microsoft abuses their OS monopoly to ensure 90% of non-tech-savvy users will eventually be using Edge.

Sign up for Twitter. Immediately you're greeted with a list of "suggested filters" that will pop up again and again, using dark patterns eventually, until you either give in or are tricked into adding Twitter's highly recommended "safe filter plus package" that uses the exact same shadow bans and biased algorithms used by default today.

[dane-pgp]

Good, and then we'll get the government to start banning dark patterns.

Actually, I suspect that such a law would be on even shakier First Amendment grounds, but here's a test that might bring this regulation into the realms of competition law rather than regulating speech:

Whenever a (sufficiently large) platform makes a UI change about which the FTC receive multiple negative comments, that platform is required to run a poll of (some random subset of) its users, with a wording specified by the FTC, asking the users if they like the change or they find it manipulative.

If most users think that the change is negative, then that's a de facto / prima facie case of the platform abusing its monopoly power to the detriment of its users, since if there were a free market then those users would simply move to a competing platform.