User Irresponsibility

I went off on a bit of a rant in my reaction to a blog posting about privacy issues and Facebook - which is getting to be rather a habit lately and I probably need to work on it - and am reposting it here to maintain the information in my own repository.

In the original post, the author seems to be implying that Facebook is to be held responsible for users who indiscreetly post information about themselves, and that they are purposefully trying to make things difficult by having an unnecessarily complex interface (he refers to the need to go into "advanced" settings) and an incomprehensible privacy policy (he indicates that it's longer than the U.S. Constitution).

That rankles a bit, because from a perspective of UX design, we go to great lengths to make things as easy an understandable as we can, yet users seem to bumble along without bothering to read instructions or heed warnings and, when they find they've made a mistake, seek to blame the site operator rather than learn from their own mistakes.

It's a side effect of our litigious culture, I suppose, but I sense that the long-term effects may be severely detrimental. But rather than paraphrase myself further or add to an already-lengthy rant, here was my response:

The question you ask – how many of users bother to check their settings – is the thorn in everyone’s side when technology is adopted by the masses.

It’s not just highly sophisticated technologies, but even simple ones: for the longest time, there was this running joke about people whose VCRs were constantly flashing “12:00″ because they never bothered to figure out how to set the clock … and 10% of the audience laughed at the notion that people could be so stupid, while the other 90% laughed because, back at home, their VCR was flashing, and they felt a little awkward and embarrassed by it.

And in most cases, it’s not because the manufacturers of VCRs made it difficult to set the clock – a child could figure out how to do it within half a minute – it was just that people didn’t bother. I don’t think the Facebook privacy “issues” are much different – the settings are easy to access and modify. But people don’t bother.

There are sites like lamebook.com and failbooking.com that provide thousands of instances where people indiscreetly posted information that they probably shouldn’t have – and much like the VCR joke, 10% are laughing at the carelessness of others and the other 90% are a bit nervous because they may be doing the same. But unlike the VCR joke, being careless with social media isn’t a private embarrassment, but a public one.

In the end, what disturbs me most of all is that the carelessness of the user has the potential to become a liability for those who provide these services. And it’s not that Facebook is evil or is trying to make things unnecessarily complex – it’s about as easy as it could possibly be, but people just don’t bother.

No matter what Facebook does, how easy or obvious they make things, there will be people who simply won’t bother – and Web usability will bear out that even if you give them a “big red warning,” they’ll just click OK without bothering to read it – and worse, will get litigious when they seek someone else to blame for the consequences of their own disregard.

If these problems continue, and if lawsuits side with the faction that wants to hold Facebook liable, the only choice is to shut down the service or disable it to the point where it’s not useful at all.

That may seem a bit melodramatic from a short-run perspective of specific complaints and incidents … but over the long term, it’s a serious threat to the availability of technology in general.

If it’s not feasible to provide a technology unless you can render it safe in the hands of users who won’t bother to read instructions or heed warnings without risking liability, than most companies won’t.

My hope is that incidents such as the one you describe are used to illustrate to users the importance of paying attention – but in the “not-my-fault” climate of our current culture, I despair that may not be the outcome.

This impromptu rant could probably use a bit more development, but I think that further consideration will uphold the fundamental theses of the argument.