Privacy Nudges for Social Media: An Exploratory Facebook Study Yang Wang * , Pedro Giovanni Leon † , Kevin Scott † Xiaoxuan Chen ‡ , Alessandro Acquisti † , Lorrie Faith Cranor † * Syracuse University ywang@syr.edu † Carnegie Mellon University {pgl,kevinsco, acquisti,lorrie}@andrew.cmu.edu ‡ University of Pittsburgh xic34@pitt.edu ABSTRACT Anecdotal evidence and scholarly research have shown that a sig- nificant portion of Internet users experience regrets over their on- line disclosures. To help individuals avoid regrettable online disclo- sures, we employed lessons from behavioral decision research and research on soft paternalism to design mechanisms that “nudge” users to consider the content and context of their online disclosures before posting them. We developed three such privacy nudges on Facebook. The first nudge provides visual cues about the audience for a post. The second nudge introduces time delays before a post is published. The third nudge gives users feedback about their posts. We tested the nudges in a three-week exploratory field trial with 21 Facebook users, and conducted 13 follow-up interviews. Our system logs, results from exit surveys, and interviews suggest that privacy nudges could be a promising way to prevent unintended disclosure. We discuss limitations of the current nudge designs and future directions for improvement. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.5.m [Information Interfaces and Presentation (e.g., HCI)]: Miscellaneous Keywords Facebook, nudge, privacy, online disclosure, soft paternalism. 1. INTRODUCTION For several decades, social scientists have pointed to the role of heuristics and cognitive or behavioral biases (such as bounded rationality and hyperbolic discounting) in affecting economic de- cision making [20, 13]. Some of those biases and heuristics are likely to also affect online disclosure habits, explaining why mak- ing the “right” privacy decision – a decision an individual will not later regret – is difficult online [1, 4], and why regrettable disclo- sures may be common. Indeed, privacy blunders in social media offer vivid examples of the hurdles faced by users. Services such as Facebook facilitate the seamless, rapid broadcasting of intimate disclosures to audiences of both friends and strangers, often using interfaces fraught with complex settings. A considerable propor- tion of users of social media end up sharing online information and feelings that they later regret disclosing. Those disclosures some- times carry substantial consequences, such as losing a relationship or a job [23]. In the field of behavioral economics, researchers have proposed soft (or asymmetric or libertarian) paternalistic interventions that nudge (instead of force) individuals toward certain behaviors [21]. Thaler and Sunstein popularized the idea of nudging as a form of soft paternalism to help people overcome cognitive or behavioral biases in decision making [22]. They define a nudge as “any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a pre- dictable way without forbidding any options or significantly chang- ing their economic incentives” [22]. For instance, a radar speed sign that displays the driver’s current driving speed (e.g., 85 mph) does not force her to slow down when the speed limit is 60 mph, but rather nudges her to slow down. Inspired by studies of regrettable behavior on social media [23], and by the literature on behavioral decision research, our work explores a novel approach to help peo- ple protect their privacy in social media. Specifically, in this paper, we describe the application of soft paternalistic interventions to mitigate the effects of behavioral and cognitive biases on information disclosure decisions. We designed and evaluated three mechanisms that nudge users to consider more carefully the content and context of their disclosures on Facebook. One nudging mechanism provides visual cues about the audience of a post; a second one includes time delays before a post is pub- lished; a third one gives users feedback about their posts. We also developed a platform that enables us to deploy nudges and test them with Facebook users “in the wild.” Using Facebook as an application domain, we explored the pos- sibility of nudging users to make better (that is, less likely to be regretted) decisions about disclosing information in social media. We conducted a three-week exploratory field trial of these nudges with 21 Facebook users. By triangulating system logs of partici- pants’ behavioral data with results from an exit survey and follow- up interviews, we found preliminary evidence that the nudges had influenced some users’ posting behavior, sometimes mitigating un- intended disclosures and potential regret. We also identified limi- tations of the current nudge designs and future directions for im- provement. 2. RELATED WORK In the offline world, we are typically able to tailor our comments, gestures, and actions to a specific audience [10]. However, on on- line social media services such as Facebook, communication tends to be flat and lack context. For instance, Facebook users usually have different types of contacts (e.g., family, co-workers) as their Facebook friends. However, Acquisti and Gross found that early Copyright is held by the International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2). IW3C2 reserves the right to provide a hyperlink to the author’s site if the Material is used in electronic media. 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