We talked a bit about this in engineering sync this week. Both changes (updating the onboarding flow and the data sharing modal) are certainly technically possible. But we feel the data sharing modal (in the explore feed, outside of the onboarding flow) may be perceived as slightly user hostile.

@JTannerWMF @OTichonova Would you all be open to us making the onboarding flow update, seeing if it satisfyingly moves the needle for analytics opt-in for new users, then exploring the modal or some alternate opt-in method in the future if it doesn't?

Either they should not be allowed to skip any of the steps in the onboarding (remove skip as an option for onboarding), or we pop up the modal.

I am fine with going with the first option so that both needs are met.

In T346188#9408240, @JTannerWMF wrote:

Either they should not be allowed to skip any of the steps in the onboarding (remove skip as an option for onboarding), or we pop up the modal.

I am fine with going with the first option so that both needs are met.

What's the motivation behind forcing a user into making this decision (i.e. forcing an immediate explicit opt-in or out)?

@Dmantena we made the change to have user explicitly affirm or deny data sharing first on Android https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T326173 to resolve the user story: "As a Wikipedia Android app user in Europe, I want to easily decide if I do not want to share data, so that I can feel confident the app respects my privacy expectations"

I believe the original ask for data sharing was part of an effort to comply with GDPR data privacy standards - where collecting user data users needs to be permitted by user. I was not directly involved when this was implemented so this is my best guess, I searched Phab and didn't find any tickets that stated why we implemented this option for users. Worth having a further discussion about a) is this option in fact a requirement to be GDPR compliant and b) if not, do we want to continue offering this option.

Since that time, the iOS App Store has updated their Privacy information for users directly on the app page to show users what data the app will be potentially collecting and shows users we aren't collecting anything that could be personally identifying.

Relevant tickets:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T131863
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T147372

Moved this out of Needs design as this is already designed for Android.