How Social Are Social Media The Dark Patterns In Facebook's Interface

TL;DR

This paper investigates Facebook's interface to identify dark patterns that influence user privacy, using empirical HCI analysis to highlight ethical concerns and potential improvements.

Contribution

It introduces an empirical design analysis of Facebook's interface to uncover dark patterns affecting user privacy, bridging HCI and ethical interface design.

Findings

Identified interface features impacting user privacy

Highlighted dark patterns in Facebook's design

Discussed future directions for ethical UI design

Abstract

Many researchers have been concerned with social media and possible negative impacts on the well-being of their audience. With the popularity of social networking sites (SNS) steadily increasing, psychological and social sciences have shown great interest in their effects and consequences on humans. Unfortunately, it appears to be difficult to find correlations between SNS and the results of their works. We, therefore, investigate Facebook using the tools of HCI to find connections between interface features and the concerns raised by these domains. With a nod towards Dark Patterns, we use an empirical design analysis to identify interface interferences that impact users' online privacy. We further discuss how HCI can help to work towards more ethical user interfaces in the future.