
Design Tricks Facebook Uses To Affect Your Privacy Decisions - nreece
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/25/5-design-tricks-facebook-uses-to-affect-your-privacy-decisions/
======
DanielBMarkham
Can you imagine walking up to a guy on the street and saying something like
"Hey there. If you tell me the names and contact information for all of your
friends, the conversations you've had with them, the type of products you
like, your occupation and lots of other demographic information? I'll let you
play this little game with bottle caps"

Yet to many technologists working on the internet this seems like a perfectly
reasonable trade to ask people to make.

So are people aware of what they are doing and are making a fair trade? Or are
we taking advantage of folks simply because the technology is new?

There is a moral component to modern software development. Many of us
technology folks don't like to talk about it, but simply because we don't talk
about it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

~~~
zerostar07
That's not a fair analogy, because the bottle cap game does not need that
information. It's more close to a doctor asking you about your and your
family's medical past. If you trust the doctor its fine, if you don't it's a
hard situation to figure out.

Edit: this is not supposed to be a direct analogy (obviously Facebook does not
have your medical records yet, afaik). Games want to have the ability to find
out who is your friend and to post on your behalf, it's not absolutely
necessary but millions of people understand it's the price they pay for a free
game.

~~~
ohashi
What games are you claiming need the same level of information about me as a
doctor?

Frankly, your analogy is ridiculous. Facebook apps aren't integral parts of my
health and well-being. They don't need to delve into my personal life.

They want to. That's one way to exploit me to advertisers. But a Doctor
absolutely needs to, for my own well being. Games and the advertisers they
serve don't have that claim.

~~~
zerostar07
The social element is absolutely essential to such simple games. If it weren't
for the constant nagging of your friends there wouldn't be much fun they would
practically not work.

If you feel the games exploit you (or the doctor invades your life) , then
avoid them.

~~~
ceejayoz
> If it weren't for the constant nagging of your friends there wouldn't be
> much fun they would practically not work.

"It wouldn't work without constant nagging" is supposed to _support_ your
point?

> If you feel the games exploit you (or the doctor invades your life) , then
> avoid them.

The entire point of the article is that Facebook is intentionally making it
less obvious that these games are exploiting your personal information.

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jasonkester
Anybody know how to read techcrunch articles on an iPad these days?

I get fifteen seconds of article, then get redirected to that "download our
app" thing. No combination of back/forward or clicking "no, let me read the
article" results in me being able to actually read the article.

I'm not about to pollute my iPad just for one site, so I guess from here on
out I just have to make a mental note to stay away from techcrunch articles
when they come through here.

~~~
esolyt
Can you do user agent spoofing on an iPad? Because iPad browser is perfectly
capable of viewing desktop websites except those with Flash.

~~~
7402
Yes. I use the 'Atomic Web Browser' for that.
[http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/atomic-web-
browser/id34792941...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/atomic-web-
browser/id347929410?mt=8)

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leke
I was on gmail and suddenly got a offer from google to have video chat turned
on. I thought I already had video chat, but clicked ok anyway. By doing so, it
turned out I was upgrading to google plus.

~~~
switch007
They make/offer you the chance sign up to Google Plus in so many places it's
infuriating.

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olliesaunders
Some more of these tricks, not specific to Facebook, are compiled here:
<http://wiki.darkpatterns.org/Main_Page>

This wiki has been around for a number of years and I always thought it was a
great idea. Shame it hasn’t really seemed to have taken off.

------
gingerlime
Security confirmations are always tricky, because most of the time users
aren't able to fully (or even partially) understand the full implications of
the response they give.

If I accept this certificate, what does it mean? Is something bad going to
happen to my computer?

So they can access my name, picture, gender etc... but what are they going to
do with it?

It's quite obvious to see that this new style of confirmation would increase
conversion and more people will click 'Play Game' than 'Allow'. Higher
conversion means more money.

At the end of the day, for facebook it's a question of who they want to keep
happy. Their users by keeping their privacy and giving them the best tools to
make informed decisions, or the app publishers - who want to get as many users
as they can, and need some way to make money out of those users. Considering
that users aren't directly paying anything to facebook, and app publishers are
more likely to increase fb's revenue - I think it's clear which side facebook
would pick.

~~~
mccr8
Good point about security confirmations, but it isn't as simple as users
versus app publishers. Leading users down the garden path like this helps
users who don't care about app privacy, or who already have a default
understanding that apps may post on their wall, by letting them get on with
playing the game without having to understand a page of stuff they don't care
about or already know.

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thejosh
If FB is so evil TC, why are you using them for your comments :-)

~~~
thinkingisfun
Lazyness? Hypocrisy?

But does it really matter? If I had a grandma she wouldn't be using
techcrunch, she'd be using facebook.

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akldfgj
Google Play does a similar thing: Instead of showing all the permissions an
app uses, they show a couple, then show the OK button, then hide the rest of
the permissions behind a "See all..." screen after the OK button.

------
RexRollman
Facebook is simply not trustworthy. I feel sorry for people having to create
an account simply to use Spotify.

~~~
pygy_
You don't have to use the same account for everything.

I have one for social interactions with all privacy settings maxed out
(including opting out of the Facebook platform [0]), and one for apps, with no
friends.

The same goes for Twitter. <http://twitter.com/loganloginski>

[0] Otherwise the apps of your friends have access to your data.

~~~
gergles
It's against the Facebook ToS to have more than one account.

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neilk
Some of this seems evil to me, some of it doesn't.

It is likely that many people really are searching for the button that allows
them to fucking play the game. (The people joining Facebook now must be the
trailing end of the trailing end of computer-savviness.)

On the other hand, Facebook has decided not to try to educate these users any
more. They wash their hands of the whole affair.

Funny, now it's obvious that they could have been that evil to start with. I
wonder what's changed. It might be personnel changes and/or share price...?

~~~
thinkingisfun
_Funny, now it's obvious that they could have been that evil to start with. I
wonder what's changed._

Time passed. Like someone who first makes lewd remarks, doesn't encounter
(enough) resistance, then tries for a grope.

------
laironald
Wow. Feeling like this will be a predictable cycle.. I remember how difficult
it was for me to convince my friends to install an app on Facebook due to the
FarmVille Fatigue. Led to me and others writing "we will never post on your
wall without your permission". This definitely feels loose and ripe for
manipulation/privacy backlash. Well, let the "viral coefficient" loose...

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isthisajoke
When reading this I could not help but think of Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, from
Get Smart: "It's the old .... trick"

Those Facebook guys are just so clever. Pat yourselves on the back you wily
"engineers". You guys are so productive. How do you do it?

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benjlang
Excellent post, it's crazy what Facebook is doing to invade our privacy.
That's why I use <http://mypermissions.org> to scan all the apps I've
connected with.

~~~
pdonis
I'm not sure I trust mypermissions.org any more than Facebook. Not even an
"About" page or a FAQ page? _Nothing_ explaining what they do, how it works,
etc? Just click on a button with no explanation of what will happen? Sorry,
but that rings all of my alarm bells. Not to mention that their solution to
keeping apps from getting private info is...another app?

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RommeDeSerieux
Disgusting, but not in any way surprising.

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notatoad
I don't see a whole lot to demonize facebook for here. With the old design, it
probably took one, maybe two viewings of that screen to train a user that the
'allow' button is the one they have to push to play the game, and as soon as
they learn what button they have to click to proceed, they never read anything
on the page ever again. With the new design, users who care about privacy
continue to have access to the relevant information, and the other 99.9% get
to their game a little quicker. No matter how hard you try, most people are
still going to try to ignore any text they are presented with that is not
absolutely necessary to achieving their goal.

~~~
droithomme
But where is the "play game without disclosing my birthdate, home address,
email address, and list of business contacts" button?

~~~
notatoad
there isn't one. you pay to play with your information instead of with money,
there is no 'play without paying' button, just like there is no 'steal' button
in itunes.

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mleonhard
Another dirty trick they use is refusing to fix the button to turn off apps,
plugins, and Facebook integration on other websites. Log in to Facebook, click
the down arrow next to your name, click "Privacy Settings", click edit
settings next to "Ads, Apps, and Websites", then in "Apps you use" click "Turn
off". You will see this error:

"There was an error while disabling applications and websites. Please try
again."

I reported this to Facebook three months ago and haven't heard anything back.
This has been broken for three months. I believe it is intentionally broken.
Shame on you Facebook!

------
omarchowdhury
Is this implementation open to all developer accounts? Anyone have more
information about it?

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sgdesign
This is a small nit-pick, but I feel like the word "design" gets thrown around
a lot these days, until it doesn't even mean anything anymore.

I would expect a "design trick" to be using color, contrast, or typography to
achieve a result. If getting rid of the "don't allow" button counts as
"design", then I wonder if "design" has become too broad a term to still be
useful.

~~~
micheljansen
That's because you had a very limited definition of what design is. Design is
not just how it looks, it is much more about how it works (and in a highly
visual media like the web, how it looks is of course a big part of that).

Edit to add some nuance: I didn't mean to take this out on you personally.
Your limited definition of what "design" as "visual design" is actually fairly
pervasive these days and as a (non visual) designer this bothers me to no end.
I'm blaming the use of design as a noun for this. People want to have
something that is "design", whatever that means. Design, however, is also a
verb. It is the process of shaping a product to fit its users' needs. For
software, that means figuring out what it should and shouldn't do, how it
should do it, how to organise information, what language (visual and verbal)
to use and testing, testing, testing. To do this right, you need more than
just a talented artist that can make a pretty picture.

