Tell Me What You Know: GDPR Implications on Designing Transparency and Accountability for News Recommender Systems

The GDPR has a significant impact on the way users interact with technologies, especially the everyday platforms used to personalize news and related forms of information. This paper presents the initial results from a study whose primary objective is to empirically test those platforms' level of compliance with the so-called 'right to explanation'. Four research topics considered as gaps in existing legal and HCI scholarship originated from the project's initial phase, namely (1) GDPR compliance through user-centered design; (2) the inclusion of values in the system; (3) design considerations regarding interaction strategies, algorithmic experience, transparency, and explanations; and (4) technical challenges. The second phase is currently ongoing and allows us to make some observations regarding the registration process and the privacy policies of three categories of news actors: first-party content providers, news aggregators and social media platforms.