Please listen to the entire privacy policy

It’s wild to me how much legal and compliance have expanded the scope and complexity of privacy policies over the last 15+ years in tech. Opting in used to involve a quick scan of a brief set of policies, but tech is not immune to trending toward chaos.

Most apps now bury their privacy policy and terms behind a check mark. It makes sense because no one is going to take the time to read through thousands of words to understand what they’re signing up for. However, by neglecting this information, people pay a price. Usually, it’s some sort of consolation in terms of data ownership or privacy. Most people don’t seem to care, so here we are.

What if reading these policies was mandatory? This would be a nightmare, but one way to make it more “palatable” would be to make it a passive experience rather than an active one. You can imagine opening an app and listening to the privacy as if it were a long, boring podcast. I don’t think this is a good experience per se, but it would force a deeper level of understanding (or at least exposure) to the legal mechanisms powering big apps.

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