What Should Policy Writers Do?

Multi-modality tends to aid understanding and comprehension by allowing visual examples. Google was one company that made use of video, images, links, etc. in an effort to make the opaqueness (so often found in EULAs and Privacy Policies) clear. The incorporation of this level and self-consciousness of the possibilities of digital rhetoric was so useful to users’ understanding of what’s involved in their policies that we found it interesting that many digital platforms and services do little with multi-modality in their policies. Perhaps it might be because they think they don't need it, that visuals don't belong in legal jargon, or, if we’re feeling paranoid, because they don't want you to understand every aspect of their policies.

While the legal jargon may be obfuscating, the way these policies often appear as pop-ups is intentional. It is ingrained in us to immediately click whatever we need to to get rid of pop-ups. When these policies appear in this manner, we will click “accept” by default to continue to our desired content without fully understanding the policy. We are all guilty of clicking through without even reading, much less understanding, what we are getting ourselves into. By eliminating pop-up policies, policy writers could start to remedy the issue of policy ignorance.