A Deceptive Pattern Ties Users’ Instagram and Facebook Posts ⇥ nytimes.com

Kalley Huang and Sheera Frenkel, New York Times:

The surge in Facebook activity is rooted in a new feature from Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. Last year, Meta introduced a prompt that popped up on Instagram when people posted a photo or story. The prompt asked Instagram users if they wanted to share their post to Facebook, too.

To make the prompt go away, users had to click a big blue button to agree to share their Instagram posts on Facebook, or a smaller hyperlink to opt out. Many people, including Ms. Underwood, clicked the more visible blue button — and then immediately forgot about it, according to interviews with more than a dozen Gen Z and millennial Instagram users. Reversing the setting requires clicking through multiple Instagram menus.

The relationship between the age range of users interviewed for this story — “Gen Z and millennial” — and the deceptive dialog seems tenuous. While Instagram generally skews younger than Facebook, there is no indication in this story that the prompt was targeted to a certain demographic on Instagram.

Anyway, just another day at the newly “privacy-focused” social company that is Meta, upholding principles like “reducing permanence” and safety.