User Choice Depends on Context

In his book Predictably Irrational Dan Ariely gives a strong convincing example of the power of defaults to influence people. He references a study that attempts to explain why the ratio of organ donors to non-donors (people who volunteer to give away their organs when they die) varies so much between countries with similar demographic / sociocultural / and ethnic backgrounds. For example, Scandinavian countries, or countries of Western Europe, etc. The researchers found out that the high variation is primarily caused by the format of the wording on the form that citizens are required to fill. 

One type of form asked citizens to check the box to participate in the organ donation program. The other type of form asked citizens to check the box if they don't want to participate in the organ donation program. Both forms offer people a chance to revert their decision in the future.

As it turns out countries with the second type of forms (opt-out NOT opt-in) have a significantly higher percentage of their population that participates in the donation programs. Choosing if you want to be a donor is a complex decision for which all the repercussions are not immediately understood. And many would rather not change anything in the form until they've given it enough thought. Of course, after the form is submitted, people get back to their daily lives and the majority will completely forget about it leaving the default on the paper determine what happens to their organs when they die.

This study is clear in its findings: people have much less freedom in deciding things than they think they do. The system designer: the person that writes the form or the user interface designer that creates the popup has a higher control on people's decisions than the people who think they are making the decision themselves. 

And as a result, the people designing the systems have a high degree of responsibility which grows proportionally to the amount of people exposed to the system. In the case of Facebook, 350 M users is a whole lot of responsibility.

The 'Privacy Announcement'

 
Which brings us to Facebook. Almost 6 weeks ago, they prompted users to revisit their privacy settings because they were as they put it "making some changes to give you more control of your information and stay connected". The popup would display up to three times before forcing the user to visit a privacy page that he had to evaluate and confirm.

While the stated goal of that 'Privacy Announcement' was to help users get more control (understood as choice to share or hide information), the form has multiple design and linguistic elements that indicate a strong preference from Facebook to get users to materially loosen their privacy controls.

Here are three techniques they've used.

1. Focus on the Wanted Choice: The choice to share more is on the left side. People read left-to-right and left is where users will more likely focus on. This same technique is used on many freemium websites (for example Basecamp) where more expensive options are on the left, and the free version is all the way to the right. 
2. Barriers Through Clicks: To revert to the current settings, you need to click a total of 10 times, while to stay on the proposed settings, you don't have to do anything. Facebook is putting you in a situation where you need significantly more effort to leave things as they are in comparison to having them as they want you to.
3. Negative Naming: They call the current settings 'old settings' to give them a negative connotation that implies a sense of expiration or being outdated and discourage you from clicking on them. This is the other side of the coin of how the different groups of the abortion rights issue like to call themselves: Pro-choice / or Pro-life. You don't hear any group calling themselves Pro-death and Anti-choice.

Here is a screenshot of the form for your reference: 

If Facebook really wanted to give people more control, they would have left the defaults to the current privacy settings for everyone, and gave users the chance to share more if they felt like it. But clearly the main goal was to get people to share more.

And I have a sense that in their product management meetings, and in their user tests, as they were testing different versions of this page, the #1 metric that they had as a goal was which percentage of the users in this test ended up sharing the types of information that we wanted them to share?

The Spin 

After that 'Privacy Announcement' was rolled out to users, many experts in the field had a negative view about it including Jason Calcanis, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, & Venture Beat. But just like in politics, Facebook was ready with its own spin and talking points. 

1. For example, in response to Venture Beat's article, Facebook came back with arguments ranging from the we've talked to regulators argument to our statistcs show that users are more empowered and we have a new privacy center. 

But none of that matters, because at the end of the day, 95% of the users will NOT remember Zuckerberg's December 1 open letter about upcoming privacy changes. And 95% of users will NOT read the privacy guide in the privacy section. This is not D.C. People are not judged by their initiatives or beliefs. In Silicon Valley, it's the effect of what you do that is important. And if no one remembers something it's like as if you never said it.

2. In addition the Facebook PR rep. says the following: "Facebook’s model of personalized control" where each post or shared item can have its own privacy settings "will make the default mode obsolete". 
 
No it will NOT make the default model obsolete. Because the default is by definition, the path of least effort, and as long as there are two paths one of which is always selected and the other is not, the users carry the burden of changing that option every single time they encounter those options. And as a result users will end up going the easier path. So if Facebook manipulates users into changing their default option to 'share with everyone' then to protect one's privacy a user will have to do an extra step every time he shares any information if he wants to stay private. If Facebook really believed that the default model is obsolete, then why would they force every single one of their 350 Million users to go and change those defaults instead of just explaining the per-post privacy feature and leave it at that?

3. Also Facebook says this: "Furthermore, we do not recommend the “Everyone” setting for people who have customized their settings previously".

It is true that people who have set some particular privacy settings previously, had those specific settings untouched. But those users constitute a small fraction of the total user base by Facebook's own admission. And the fact that they have gone this extra step makes them more advanced users. So this emphasizes the point that Facebook's careful manipulation of the defaults in their December privacy change hit the most vulnerable users, those with the least understanding of the site who had previously never changed their privacy settings. Those are the users who are most likely to go with the defaults, and who are the least likely to go back to the privacy page in the future.

Conclusion

I think that information transparency will have a positive outcome on society our sociecty is increasingly moving in this direction. And I think that there will be multiple drivers taking us there including emerging companies like Facebook. And with time, more people will likely start to see that the benefits that transparency brings outweigh the inconveniences. 

But none of that gives Facebook the right to manipulate users into unknowingly giving away their privacy. No matter if they're doing this for the good of the world, or to populate their open stream API with a press of a button and garner an enhanced competitive position against Twitter.