Dear god. Just got a notification from Facebook that unless I write out a whole thing begging them to opt me out, which they can ignore, they're going to use anything/everything I've ever posted, including photos, for whatever AI purposes they like. And of course, the objection process doesn't work.
Let's go through the obvious dark pattern, shall we? First, the notification promises "new AI features for you" and says you can "learn how we use your information". Zero indication that they're going to be changing how they use your information and you might want to opt out. Great start!
If you bother to tap it (why would you?), you get this utterly misleading page which very explicitly *does not tell you* what they are planning to do with your information, and of course, the big blue button simply closes it, compared to the teeny little "right to object" link. Let's tap it anyway..
Turns out that little link loads a webpage with an error message in the built-in FB browser, with tiny text. Definitely not like they're trying to discourage you, right? If you zoom in, you can see maybe you need to log in again, but throwing an error message is another obvious dark pattern barrier.
Let's log in, and hey, turns out Meta are planning to use anything you've ever posted, including posts, photos, regardless of privacy settings, for their AI. If you don't like it, you can't just opt out, you need to write a thing explaining how it impacts you, but they say they can just ignore it!
So, after having to re-enter your email address after you're already logged in, writing a mini essay to beg to possibly opt out, and clicking the button to submit, you're done?
Haha no of course not, they still have more hoops for you to jump through and preferably give up on, it's email code time!
Notice it says that if you don't get an email code, there's no button to resend it, it says you'll have to close it and start over, which means re-writing that mini essay they just made you wrote all over again.
I never got an email, and I still haven't after having tried it multiple times.
@lopatto.bsky.social Any chance The Verge has any interest in possibly writing about how obviously awful and manipulative this whole process is in general? Maybe a handy dandy EU person they can tag to be like "hey, is this obvious dark pattern a dark pattern that GDPR takes issue with?"?
