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This is a tremendously interesting study that has been conducted by the Norwegian Consumer Council (PDF). What the study lays out is that companies like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft use design techniques in how they exhibit choices to you, in order to get you to pick what they want you to pick when going through options in things like privacy and access settings. They call these exploitive and unethical, and label these "dark patterns." Thanks to Wrecked Em for the link.
In this report, we analyze a sample of settings in Facebook, Google and Windows 10, and show how default settings and dark patterns, techniques and features of interface design meant to manipulate users, are used to nudge users towards privacy intrusive options. The findings include privacy intrusive default settings, misleading wording, giving users an illusion of control, hiding away privacy-friendly choices, take-it-or-leave-it choices, and choice architectures where choosing the privacy friendly option requires more effort for the users.
In this report, we analyze a sample of settings in Facebook, Google and Windows 10, and show how default settings and dark patterns, techniques and features of interface design meant to manipulate users, are used to nudge users towards privacy intrusive options. The findings include privacy intrusive default settings, misleading wording, giving users an illusion of control, hiding away privacy-friendly choices, take-it-or-leave-it choices, and choice architectures where choosing the privacy friendly option requires more effort for the users.