Following the acquisition of BeReal by the French mobile gaming firm Voodoo this summer, the popular selfie-sharing app favored by Gen Z users altered its approach to user consent regarding tracking. This change has led to a privacy complaint in Europe. Verified violations of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) may incur fines of up to 4% of a company’s global annual revenue.
The European privacy rights organization noyb has filed the complaint, alleging that BeReal employs deceptive practices, often referred to as “dark patterns,” to coerce users into allowing ad tracking. This approach contravenes the GDPR principle that consent should be “freely given.”
Since July 2024, according to noyb, users of BeReal in Europe have encountered a consent banner that ostensibly provides a straightforward choice to accept or refuse tracking. However, the complaint highlights the unequal experience that follows user interaction with the banner, claiming it is unjust and possibly illegal.
According to noyb’s allegations, BeReal utilizes a persistent “nudging tactic” that repeatedly prompts users who opt out of tracking. Whenever these users attempt to publish a post, the consent banner resurfaces daily, while those who agree to tracking are not bothered by the pop-up again.
“This exemplifies a classic dark pattern designed to sway users into compliance and irritate them into consent,” noyb stated in a press release regarding the complaint. “Ultimately, BeReal seems unwilling to accept a ‘no’ when it comes to respecting the privacy rights of Europeans.”
Lisa Steinfeld, a data protection attorney at noyb, emphasized in a statement, “BeReal’s nudging strategies are downright absurd. Initially, when users engage with the consent banner, they might feel that the app genuinely respects their choice—only to discover that BeReal doesn’t actually accept refusals. It is clear that BeReal is attempting to force users into consenting to tracking.”
To substantiate its claim that this tactic violates GDPR, noyb refers to 2022 guidelines from the European Data Protection Board addressing dark patterns on social media, which caution against “continuous prompting” techniques that repeatedly request user consent. This behavior is likely to lead to users succumbing out of fatigue from declining each time they utilize the platform.
“The GDPR makes it abundantly clear that consent must be freely given,” Steinfeld added. “Regrettably, BeReal appears indifferent to this and instead chooses to pressure individuals into granting consent, even if they do not wish to be tracked.”
Noyb has formally lodged the complaint against BeReal with CNIL, the French data protection authority, as Voodoo, the app’s parent company, is headquartered in France. The organization is urging the regulator to mandate changes to the consent process to ensure it aligns with the GDPR’s principles of freely given consent, in addition to requesting the deletion of any data collected since the introduction of the dark pattern. They are also advocating for the imposition of a fine.
Voodoo has been approached for comment regarding the BeReal complaint.
Compiled by Techarena.au.
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