Dec. 12 (Portaltic/EP) –
The BeReal social network insists users every day with a pop-up window to consent to the use of their personal data for advertising purposes, which only disappears if they accept, a “dark pattern” that the non-profit organization Noyb has reported to the French authority of data protection (CNIL).
BeReal became popular in 2022 as an alternative to Instagram that works with alerts to upload a daily photo, with the aim of capture spontaneity of users and give a more natural image.
Since 2024, when opening the application, users also see a pop-up asking them about if they consent to their personal data being used for advertising purposes. The peculiarity of this request is that if they accept, they stop seeing the notification, and if they reject it, it appears every day until they decide to click on “the correct button.”
So they have reported from Noybwhich affect the “dark pattern” with which the social network seeks to obtain the consent of its users. This is a “misleading design” that clashes with what is stated in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union: that Users must freely give their consent.
This is because, if you insist that users give their consent, they They will end up giving in just to avoid seeing the notification again. “The GDPR makes it very clear that consent is only valid if it is freely given. Unfortunately, BeReal does not seem to care and prefers to pressure people to give consent even if they do not want to be tracked,” said Lisa Steinfeld, a lawyer for noyb data protection.
For this reason, noyb has filed a complaint about this practice with the CNIL, in which it requests this body to order BeReal to adjust your treatment to the regulations and delete the complainant’s personal dataand suggests that he impose an administrative fine to avoid similar violations in the future.
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