[0]: https://fbnewsroomus.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/opt-in_scre...
Nice easy-to-read high-contrast giant-font headings that seem legit: "Text anyone in your phone!" - Yay! that's exactly what I want!!!
Tricky hard-to-read low-contrast micro-font fine print that looks like way to much trouble to try to read, detailing what ACTUALLY happens when you're tricked into clicking the:
One brightly-colored-only-thing-that-looks-remotely-like-I-should-click-it call to action.
Add in the cute emoji looking user who obviously LOVES giving up his privacy, and you've got a winner!
Wow project manager, would you look at these great test results!!! everyone wants to give us their private info!!! what idiots!
-every front-end engineer ever
The UI is intentionally deceptive.
The text is deceptive. The big text says "Text anyone in your phone," which sounds great, but doesn't actually say anything about data sharing. The small low contrast text, describes what they're doing. They know that by putting it small and grey, most people wont read it.
The buttons are deceptive. It looks like there's only one button.
Even by putting all the permission stuff in a row on first startup is push ploy. Everyone knows, people just keep clicking OK until they get to actual app. People don't read the pages. People don't read the user agreements. They just want to get through the roadblocks as fast as possible so they can get to what they want.
None of this is by accident. All of these elements are chosen to push people towards the desired outcome, to upload your contacts, SMS, and call history as quickly as possible.
Then maybe "people" shouldn't act completely outraged when they find out that their call history was uploaded?
The best description I recently heard of these types push questions is "exploiting a bug in human behavior. And when the bug is in the brain, there is no patch."
This point has been the subject of numerour articles and documentaries.
Hoback states that if one was to read everything in these user/service agreements, it would take one full month, that’s 180 hours every year” and that according to The Wall Street Journal “consumers lose over $250 million dollars due to what’s hidden in these agreements.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terms_and_Conditions_May_App...
But first of all, the prompt shown in the article's screenshot was not hidden in a long ToS.
Second of all, I agree that we should work towards solving the problem that overly-long ToSs represent. What I do not agree with is the assertion that, in the presence of an overlong-ToS, we allow people to click-through, then get outraged at the company for doing something they were allowed to do by the ToS. If it really is far too long and complex for you to read, don't use the product.
Facebook is the Internet for many people, is required for authenticating by numerous services, and is how numerous groups and communities organise.
As such, its terms and services as those of numerous other services, should be defined in a standard set of obligations, rights, and responsibilities, by law.
I see this sentiment in some form a lot. Is there a name for this principle? Where does it come from? I don't in general agree with it - speaking generally, I think enforcing this principle is a way to solve some problems, but not the best way - and would be interested in discussions about the principle itself.
"Common weal", that is, the common wealth or common good, a/k/a social benefit, is probably the best general description. The notion being that there are positive externalities not addressed by the market (or there are offsetting negative externalities not imposed on the producer).
In either case, a useful functioning requires some entity with the interest, capacity, and power, to act in the public interest. The notion is an old one. It comprises Book V of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations ("The Expenses of the Sovereign"), or in contemporary economics, the area of public sector economics (or welfare economics).
And is the domain of government, as my initial response indicated.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/commonweal
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_V/...
If you needed a Facebook account to file a tax return or something, then I would agree that it's not discretionary.
This permission screen is a push poll.[0]
The bit about minimizing bias means that you couldn't possibly give users the A/B variants to choose from but instead must assert the best you can that no user is exposed to different variants of the same experiment. You would typically do this by giving the client a cookie with a random seed which you can then hash with a secret and the id of the experiment to get a randomly distributed but sticky/consistent variant assignment that doesn't scale client storage with the number of experiments. Where things get more interesting is how to change behavior when a user logs into a new device. Do you switch to the users set of variant assignments or keep the experience on this device consistent?
This being said, yeah, I'm pretty sure this is the result of optimization on "what fraction of users give consent" while keeping an eye on uninstall rate as a health metric.
Source: Redesigned/rewrote A/B testing (and general optimization) framework for large e-commerce company many years ago.
(Its grey-on-white designed to look identical to the copy text above the button. The only difference is placement, and a small difference in font size.)
All of this is clearly made to get people to opt-in. Heck, it is not even clear that the "not now" option is clickable.
At least it used to, and it was really abrasive about it. Definitely dark pattern behaviour
That specific popup is a clear example of how to maximize acceptance in a big portion of the population. I can almost guarantee you that popup design was chosen based off A-B testing, and had the highest rate of acceptance among designs.
Btw. something I am required by law here in Germany. I would need written permission of every contact in my phonebook for this upload, before uploading. Same goes for WhatApp.