Hi there! My name is Thomas and I'll be
presenting this Late-Breaking work:
Ethical User Interfaces: Exploring the
Effects of Dark Patterns on Facebook.
This work was a collaborative effort
done with Gian-Luca Savino
with whom i work closely together at
the University of Bremen in Germany.
The phenomenon of social media, and social
networking sites in general, has been in the
focus of many research disciplines for some
time now.
And while some argue that SNS bring
people from all over the world
closer together, others warn about
negative effects that may
decrease their well-being. Last year's
Netflix documentary 'The Social Dilemma'
has further increased awareness on
issues that are related to people's
mental well-being.
We as HCI researchers have the tools to
understand
how users interact with interfaces, for
example social media.
Through this lens, we identified Dark
Patterns as one of the possible places
where HCI and the concerns around users'
well-being meet.
But what are Dark Patterns? On his
website, Brignull, who coined the term,
defines them as
tricks used in websites and apps that
make you do things
that you did not mean to, like buying or
signing up for something.
Building on this idea, Gray et al. have
published a work in which they developed
a taxonomy to distinguish between specific
design practices
defining Dark Patterns as instances where
designers use their knowledge of human
behavior
and the desires of end users to
implement deceptive functionality that
is not in the user's best interest.
To explore whether Dark Patterns are
actually used on social media platforms
and if so for what purpose, we chose to
investigate Facebook as it is still
the most popular social medium using
Gray et al's taxonomy.
We started our work by comparing
Facebook's interface
when it was launched till its most
recent update. We used a manual web crawl
to find screenshots which we then
validated for accuracy.
This was done by two HCI experts, namely
the authors of this paper.
This diagram visualizes Facebook's
interface changes throughout the past 16
years.
As can be seen for the logout button and
the account settings and privacy
settings,
Facebook has changed the location of
some features from a first level to a
second level view, decreasing their
discoverability.
Later on Facebook implemented their
privacy shortcuts in their privacy
checkups
as alternative routs for users to change
their settings.
In a second study, we wanted to learn
more about people
who are using Facebook and how they use it.
We collected replies from 116 respondents
asking in a questionnaire about their
motivation, their satisfaction,
and their privacy concerns. With regards
to their motivation,
we found that people used to join
Facebook to keep in touch with their
family and friends.
But today this has shifted to Facebook's
groups features
and media consumption. As with
satisfaction we found that most people
were satisfied with the time spent on
Facebook,
however, if asked 63 percent of
them find themselves on Facebook
longer than they initially wanted to.
Still, most people think that they do not
spend too much time on Facebook.
With respect to privacy concerns, we
found an incongruence between people's
concerns about Facebook's use of their
personal data
and their usage behavior. Here, we can see
that 63 percent feel in control over their personal
data that they share with Facebook. With
regards to advertisement data, this is
shifted to 70 percent who
feel not in control over this kind of
data. With the results of those two
studies, following Gray et al.'s
taxonomy, we can now describe at least
two occurrences
of interface interferences. With the
logout button and the privacy settings
changing their location, Facebook has
decreased their discoverability and, thus,
their usage. When we found that 79 percent
of our respondents never log out of
Facebook, we further learned that 73 percent
of our respondents are generally
concerned about their internet security.
But for the most time it was quite
difficult to find Dark Patterns for
Facebook
as they need to keep their audience
entertained and satisfied.
Thus, we introduce a new form of Dark
Pattern: Decision governing.
By offering various options to set
account related settings, Facebook can
navigate people's selection of the
settings that they will choose.
Furthermore, aesthetically more pleasing
features that may yield better usability
but incomplete coverage,
Facebook governs over the settings that
their audience will change.
As for our conclusion, we presented the
results of two studies. First, an
empirical interface analysis including
an inspection walk-through of
Facebook and, second, a Facebook survey
with 116 participants asking about their
motivation, their satisfaction, and privacy
concerns of Facebook.
Dark Patterns create interferences that
allow Facebook to navigate their
audience's decision-making without
causing immediate harm. Governing, but
never harming, users
makes it possible to keep users' general
satisfaction with Facebook high.
Thank you very much for listening! If you
want to get in touch, find our contact
details on this last slide.
Until then, I wish you all the best!