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One would assume that a user who's going to be deleting their account completely and irrevocably network-wide would be unimpressed with dark patterns.

I was looking up the GDPR deletion page to point someone at.

  • It's called "data request" which, while technically true, isn't intuitive for someone wanting to delete their account. I've also got the feeling it is impossible to find if you don't know of its existence.

  • While the request type is a dropdown, the form does not make it obvious:

    enter image description here

It also feels like there's a lack of documentation on SE on what these options do.

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  • It's not clear to me that an explanation of what each means should be provided to the user in that context. This is, basically, a legal process. Any such explanation could be construed as legal advice (given that it's provided directly at the time the user is trying to fill out the request, rather than as a random blog post that describes the various things you can request under GDPR). Yes, this leaves it as bad UX for the user making the request, but that's something that happens in legal situations.
    – Makyen
    Commented Mar 19 at 0:05
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    I guess what might be able to be described is what SE will do in response to each request type. That would be just describing what actions SE will take, rather than describing what each one is.
    – Makyen
    Commented Mar 19 at 0:08
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    @Makyen Just because legal matters are PITA, does the mean that the user interface should be PITA as well? Is that how we'd like the company to fulfill its legal requirements?
    – Dan Mašek
    Commented Mar 19 at 0:33
  • @DanMašek That's not what I'm saying. There's a line that SE can't cross into giving legal advice. There's also a line that SE doesn't want to cross into providing an explanation which results in SE taking on potential liability for a user relying on that explanation and there being some miscommunication, misunderstanding, etc. From a liability point of view, it's notably better to just give the official names/processes, letting the user choose. Note that I did offer a potential workaround which would only incur liability if SE didn't follow their own description of their response.
    – Makyen
    Commented Mar 19 at 0:43
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    If we look at this link I fear the interface violates multiple points - "obstructing" since they didn't explain what "do not sell my information" does even when asked, "fickle" since said info should have been clear from the interface alone and "left in the dark" because said obstruction does indeed leave us unsure about what we can do to stop them from selling our info (see for example the recent Google partnership)
    – SPArcheon - on strike
    Commented Mar 19 at 10:23
  • @Makyen Noone is asking for any sort of legal advice. This is an European law meant to protect people from unscrupulous corporations, to put it bluntly. So they comply with it and are transparent about it all, or they look like scumbags (and let's say they don't have much benefit of the doubt left anymore). If they're sketchy about it, well I'm not rich enough to take on a corporation in a legal fight (I'm from EU, not that popular thing to do here anyway). But it's definitely going to discourage me from further dealing with them (and, say, voluntarily contributing to their profits).
    – Dan Mašek
    Commented Mar 21 at 21:14

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