Tech Policy Press: Meta’s Privacy Policies: Designed Badly, by Design?

Meta didn’t always display its privacy information this way. But over the years, the company (once eponymously known for its first product, Facebook) has presented its privacy policy in an increasingly graphics-oriented format, riddled with drop-downs and buttons. The substance of that evolving set of privacy policies, as pointed out by nonprofit groups such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center, has made clear the company has continued to collect and use individuals’ data without meaningful consent. Yet, the days when users could use a little CTRL+F or CMD+F magic to search for words within a page are in the rearview mirror. Meta’s design and display decisions have made answering basic questions—such as “what data does Meta gather via virtual reality headsets?” or “from which apps and services does Meta collect fine-grained geolocation data?”—virtually impossible for the average user. You can’t even attempt to understand what you can’t easily access in the first place. Given how much effort this confusing design must take, that might be Meta’s very objective.

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