A flaw-by-flaw guide to Facebook’s new GDPR privacy changes | TechCrunch
▻https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/17/facebook-gdpr-changes
Facebook is about to start pushing European users to speed through giving consent for its new GDPR privacy law compliance changes. It will ask people to review how Facebook applies data from the web to target them with ads, and surface the sensitive profile info they share. Facebook will also allow European and Canadian users to turn on facial recognition after six years of the feature being blocked there. But with a design that encourages rapidly hitting the “Agree” button, a lack of granular controls, a laughably cheatable parental consent request for teens and an aesthetic overhaul of Download Your Information that doesn’t make it any easier to switch social networks, Facebook shows it’s still hungry for your data.
The new privacy change and terms of service consent flow will appear starting this week to European users, though they’ll be able to dismiss it for now — although the May 25th GDPR compliance deadline Facebook vowed to uphold in Europe is looming. Meanwhile, Facebook says it will roll out the changes and consent flow globally over the coming weeks and months with some slight regional differences. And finally, all teens worldwide that share sensitive info will have to go through the weak new parental consent flow.
First up is control of your sensitive profile information, specifically your sexual preference, religious views and political views. As you’ll see at each step, you can hit the pretty blue “Accept And Continue” button regardless of whether you’ve scrolled through the information. If you hit the ugly grey “Manage Data Setting” button, you have to go through an interstitial where Facebook makes its argument trying to deter you from removing the info before letting you make and save your choice. It feels obviously designed to get users to breeze through it by offering no resistance to continue, but friction if you want to make changes.
Overall, it seems like Facebook is complying with the letter of GDPR law, but with questionable spirit. Sure, privacy is boring to a lot of people. Too little info and they feel confused and scared. Too many choices and screens and they feel overwhelmed and annoyed. Facebook struck the right balance in some places here. But the subtly pushy designs seem intended to steer people away from changing their defaults in ways that could hamper Facebook’s mission and business.
Making the choices equal in visible weight, rather than burying the ways to make changes in grayed-out buttons and tiny links, would have been more fair. And it would have shown that Facebook has faith in the value it provides, such that users would stick around and leave features enabled if they truly wanted to.
When questioned about this, Sherman pointed the finger at other tech companies, saying he thought Facebook was more upfront with users. Asked to clarify if he thought Facebook’s approach was “better,” he said “I think that’s right.” But Facebook isn’t being judged by the industry standard, because it’s not a standard company. It’s built its purpose and its business on top of our private data, and touted itself as a boon to the world. But when asked to clear a higher bar for privacy, Facebook delved into design tricks to keep from losing our data.
#Facebook #RGPD #Design
