When privacy clashes with user experience

[rejectconvenience]

So I guess the newest macOS Sequoia beta requires you allow certain permissions once per week. If an app has access to record your screen, you will be required to approved that once every week. If an app has access to location services (say, Weather), it will ask you once every week. Even if you click yes every time, it will always ask.

Here's a video talking about it in more detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOjjLLViWcc

What are y'all think about this? I ask because Apple tends to lead a lot of trends like this, and if they keep it in the final version, it's likely we will see it elsewhere.

[seasnails]

It's a step toward better privacy awareness, but I imagine it would get old pretty fast tapping those things every week. On the other hand, I feel like we've been convinced to accept the loss of much of our privacy (and privacy awareness) in the name of convenience. I think this could be preferable to people just "yeah whatever" tapping anything that pops up without a thought and thoughtlessly giving up their privacy for eternity as a result? The no-nag window of a week could always be made longer if it seems like it's too much. If the app doesn't nag you until you next actually use it (after the no-nag window) I think that could probably be fine.

I don't use MacOS though and this video is making it sound like this is just one more annoying nag on top of a pile of others, which can also lead to apathetic "yeah whatever" accepting anything that pops up. I keep a bunch of my phone features off as often as possible and only enable them (like location) when I actually want to actively make use of them, so I'm more used to constantly being reminded of and fiddling with settings like this, and it makes me feel more confident in having at least some level of control over things rather than annoyed. I can definitely see the annoyance and concern over not being able to tell your device to just stop bugging you about something that you might never have any intent of approaching in any other way.

[Mark]

I just wish there was an "I don't care" button. Like, I want a button that would say "Don't ask me again".

Another approach would be a "permissions report" where maybe once a month, once a quarter, or every 6 months, it could just generate a general report of the privacy entitlements of installed apps and the approved/unapproved permissions. Make it something easy to find in the setting that a user could pull on a whim too. There are more ways to be privacy aware than to be nagged constantly.

One of the issues with Sequoia is that it's not just privacy nags being introduce. Deprecated API use warnings (screen picker for screen sharing apps for example). Especially in the enterprise space, it's pretty brutal for users to be nagged so much, and that's on top of all of the other established nags that might be corporate policy related (app and OS updates for example). Sequoia is adding anywhere from 3 to "unlimited" new nags types to users. All it's going to do is introduce fatigue and unintended consequences.

[JINSBEK]

Oh, this is going to train users to be less mindful of their settings and what they tap on—not only within their own Mac, but elsewhere. Let me give you an example: my fiancée is a manager in a grocery store. Every now and then, at the self check-out aisle, something happens (e.g. problematic item barcode) that triggers a pop-up on the screen informing the customer to please wait for assistance. These customers have been so trained by their iPads that they instinctively try to tap outside the pop-up in order to close it, and they don’t read it. They hate those prompts. They don’t read it at all. It skims the surface of their consciousness, if at all. They don’t understand that they can’t continue without store faculty helping them.

That’s at the self-checkout aisle where you’re spending money and approving transactions! How do you think people will respond to weather apps repeatedly asking people for their location permission?

[rejectconvenience]

1000% agree.