You might have tried to read the “Privacy Policy” of a popular networking site like Facebook. In case that you were able to read the small fonts and the thousands of words, were you able to comprehend? Here’s the hard truth: Privacy policies are never easy to understand. Facebook admitted this truth and now has a “better” way of disclosing its privacy policy to its customers. This is done with the hope of making its privacy policy easier to understand.
For several years, Facebook and Google have been rivals in presenting “better” versions of privacy policies. Up to now, no winner has been declared. Particularly, these two companies want to make privacy policies easier to use. This means “easy to understand, more visual and interactive, and more relevant to users’ concerns”.
What does Facebook actually mean by “presenting something different”? Facebook has opened the result for user’s comments. Instead of the term “Privacy Policy” it used “Data Use Policy”. This shift might have been the result of the protests by privacy advocates. They said that the term “Privacy Policy” is ambiguous because this generally illustrates how and when data is shared.
The new design places Facebook at a higher level in terms of visual appeal. Instead of a litany of texts, the “Data Use Policy” is presented into several pages. This improves the page’s readability compared with the older version. However, with the sections and subsections in the page, navigation is sacrificed. A reader has to come across linked pages that make spontaneous reading difficult.
This difficulty will not be addressed by just deleting some words per page. Comprehension is another key aspect to think about. Facebook admits that in essence the “Data Use Policy” is still the “Privacy Policy”. There is not really new about individual privacy policy contents. Critics assert that privacy in Facebook should not be less than unidentified use.
Google at present allows three modes of use: unidentified, pseudonymous, and identified. Facebook allows only one - identified. It requires the user to provide correct personal information. A user could become unidentified, which is also doubtful, if he or she would turn off all Platform applications. However, this would limit his or her usage without the games, applications or Websites.
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