»The Friendzzz app has requested to collect your data.«
A feminist tech vision by Safa Ghnaim
I like to imagine a world where privacy is the default and informed choice is made possible. Let’s explore one such alternate reality together…
Imagine a new app comes out and takes the world by storm. It’s called the Friendzzz app. It’s a hot new social media app that puts people over profits and is fully accessible. The Friendzzz app by default is privacy-conscious, and the only way for users to “accept” terms and conditions is to go through a carefully worded user flow, where “Accept” doesn’t even show up until the final screen. This ensures individuals are presented with all of the available information, clearly and simply, before making an informed decision. Because everybody learns differently, people can read the texts in any language, and they have the choice to listen to them as audio or watch a talking head video. Let’s check out how the Friendzzz app requests consent from the people who use it:
Notification: The Friendzzz app has requested to collect your data. Tap to learn more.
A page opens on the phone: The Friendzzz app would like to collect your first and last name, phone number, physical and email addresses, personal identification number, nationality, health history and status, medical information, bank details, passwords, browser history, browsing habits, phone contact lists, as well as connected information like those from linked apps, smart home devices, loyalty cards, biometric data (fingerprints, iris scans), flight history, photos of yourself, your partner, children, parents, friends, colleagues.
What do you want to do?
- Learn More (follow this flow for the ‘Agree’ button to be revealed at the end)
- Reject
Learn More leads to a new page: The Friendzzz app will also follow your activities on our website (what you click, how long you spend on parts of the page, etc.) so that we can better learn how to convince you to purchase our products or services next time. In fact, we will not only follow you, we will take in all that information and sell it to companies who will also profit from it. Those companies might use it for just a day, but it might also be saved forever, completely outside of your control.
What do you want to do?
- Learn More (follow this flow for the ‘Agree’ button to be revealed)
- Reject
Learn More leads to a new page: The Friendzzz app doesn’t actually know what the companies do with your information, so it might be used to reject you from your car or home loan application or it might be used to influence your voting choices in the next election (even in ways you never believed to be possible).
What do you want to do?
- Learn More (follow this flow for the ‘Agree’ button to be revealed)
- Reject
Learn More leads to a new page: It could also be that the information collected and shared about you may be used to target you with advertisements and articles that are disinformation campaigns run by foreign or local bad actors. The thing is, you will likely not have any way of knowing that it’s disinformation and will probably think it’s true, so your mental health could suffer, as could your relationships with others who see either the same or completely different disinformation.
What do you want to do?
- Learn More (follow this flow for the ‘Agree’ button to be revealed)
- Reject
Learn More leads to a new page: The combined data from you and people like you may also be used to inform who receives essential services like safety, healthcare and food. It might work in your benefit or may harm you. And if it doesn’t affect you personally, it might be that the combined data of you and millions of people like you will be used to inform algorithms such as those used in programs like predictive policing that could hurt people that look like you or different from you. Studies show that the people most harmed by these algorithms are people in vulnerable groups.
What do you want to do?
You’ll be hard-pressed to find people who really want their private data to be collected and sold, especially when they know how it could be (and is already being) used.
When imagining technical and design solutions that truly follow the principle of »informed choice«, we challenge developers, designers and stakeholders to think beyond the black box. Think creatively to avoid falling into the same pitfalls that are made by current »compliance« mechanisms and instead create an experience that puts people over profits.
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