Building Personalized Nudges to Encourage Privacy Behaviors on Online Social Networks

Manya Sleeper Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA msleeper@cmu.edu

ABSTRACT

Pedro G. Leon Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA pedrogln@cmu.edu

job loss. We found that users often regret content after incorrectly considering their audiences or when sharing content in highly emotional states [6, 4]. To help users make thoughtful and better informed decisions on social media and hence reduce the potential for regrettable actions, we propose the use of privacy nudges. These privacy nudges are modications to the social-network user interface that try to help users better consider the audience and content of their disclosures without forcing them to take a particular action [2, 8, 7]. The concept of nudges derives from the eld of behavioral economics, which studies how behavioral biases and heuristics often lead people to deviate from making rational decisions in the traditional economic sense. Nudges, also known as soft-paternalistic interventions, are designed to help users achieve stated behavioral goals without forcing them to follow a denitive path. Nudges have been applied to a variety of areas to encourage better outcomes, including health and nancial decision making [5]. Such interventions can also be applied to privacy decision making to help users make more rational, well-informed, and better choices [1]. However, privacy nudges present unique challenges. Unlike other areas in which behavioral nudges are more commonly applied, like health or nancial decision making, it is not typically obvious what the goal of the nudge should be or what the best outcome is that a user should be nudged towards. While most people will benet from saving more for retirement or eating more healthfully, users benet differently from sharing different types of content online. For example, some users may benet from venting their problems on social media, while for others this might later cause regret. Thus, over the course of creating and testing privacy nudges for Facebook we have found that general-use nudges are not broadly effective interventions. Study participants have varied needs and desires for changing their sharing behaviors on Facebook and, therefore, need more personalized nudges to meet their needs and goals. Going forward we plan to work on designing more personalized, goal-based nudges to try to allow for more effective privacy nudging. In this paper we briey outline our prior work on creating and testing privacy nudges for Facebook as well as the need for increased personalization that arose over the course of that work. We then outline our current research plans. We nish by describing our goals for this workshop and our desire to

While sharing ideas, opinions, and information on social media can represent enormous benets for users and society, sometimes apparently innocuous disclosures can lead to negative consequences. We are working on designing and evaluating behavioral nudges for social networks to help users make better online sharing decisions without forcing them to change their behaviors. Over the course of three eld studies we have found that because users vary in posting behavior and privacy goals general-purpose nudges are not broadly effective. Thus, in ongoing research, we are moving toward more personalized, goal-based nudging interventions. We discuss past research, current research plans, and a desire to collaborate with a broader community of researchers interested in behavior-change technologies.
Author Keywords

Privacy; Decision Making; Nudges, Behavior Change, Persuasion, Social Media.

ACM Classication Keywords

H.5.m. Information Interfaces and Presentation (e.g. HCI): Miscellaneous

MOTIVATION

Online sharing through social media provides many benets. However, online disclosure can also have sometimes unexpected negative consequences. Prior research has found that online social network users can experience regret as a result of their behaviors on social media. In highly publicized examples politicians have tweeted scandalous content that has led to resignation.1 However, sharing during more typical, day-to-day activities can also lead to regret. Regrettable actions can range from tweeting an insulting comment about a friend or family member that leads to a ght to making an inappropriate Facebook post that leads to
1 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/07/ anthony-weiner-twitter-dm_n_872590.html

learn and solicit feedback from the broader community as we move forward with our current research.
DESIGNING NUDGES FOR PRIVACY

Based on research on regrettable behaviors on social media we designed several privacy nudges for Facebook and tested them through eld studies. We found that participants had different types of posting behaviors on Facebook, as well as privacy desires and needs. Thus, although we saw some behavior change as a result of the nudges, it varied by participant, indicating a need for more personalized interventions.
Privacy nudges

Users vary in general Facebook usage behaviors [3], which we saw in our eld studies and which impacted how useful or annoying participants found the different nudges. For example, some participants primarily used Facebook as a marketing tool and wanted to post quickly to broad audiences. These participants found the delay nudge very annoying because it interfered with their posting rhythm. Participants also varied in their privacy goals. For example, participants varied in how much they wanted to self censor on Facebook, which contributed to how useful they found tools like the timer and sentiment nudges. One participant described getting in trouble when talking about political situations and noted that the timer nudge was useful. Alternatively a participant provided with the sentiment nudge disliked it because sometimes people post things that might sound negative, but they need others empathy and support [8]. Another participant also disliked the timer nudge because she did not need anyone editing or censoring me [7]. In line with privacy goals, participants also varied in audience concerns when shown pictures of potential audience members. This ranged from some participants who felt they were already properly managing their audiences and did not perceive much benet from the nudge to others who felt the nudge was helpful. However, there were also some participants who did not have general concerns about audience but were instead concerned about specic people who they would have preferred to get warnings about (e.g., close relatives) or about posts being publicly available. Thus, while general privacy nudges may have some positive impact for some participants, it is unlikely that they will be effective for everyone. Furthermore, they can have negative effects on some users. We posit that, in order for nudges to be more successful, they need to be personalized to account for varied Facebook posting behaviors and privacy goals.
RESEARCH PLANS

In prior work we found that, on Facebook and Twitter, lack of audience awareness, use of offensive language, and hasty disclosure can lead to regret after posting [6, 4]. Based on these results we designed, implemented, and evaluated three privacy nudges for Facebook with the goal of helping users reduce regrettable behaviors. These nudges provide users with feedback about post content and audience and encourage users to pause and think before posting. The rst privacy nudge, the audience nudge, shows participants pictures of ve randomly-selected people who could potentially see the post, as well as a brief message about the number of people who could potentially see the post. The timer nudge adds a cancelable delay prior to a post being posted. The sentiment nudge analyzes post content and provides in-line feedback, on a scale from very negative to very positive, about how others could perceive it. We performed three iterative eld trials to evaluate the effectiveness of these nudges. In the rst round (Summer 2012) we evaluated all three and identied UI improvements [8]. During the second rounds (Spring and Summer 2013) we conducted two additional eld trials to evaluate the impact of improved versions of the audience and timer nudges [7].
Impact on behavior change

We measured the impact of the nudges on participant behavior through a combination of quantitative group and individual behavior-change metrics alongside qualitative feedback provided by each participant. Overall, we found that the degree to which the nudges introduced behavior change, and the degree to which participants beneted from the different nudges varied by participant. For example, participants generally had relatively positive attitudes toward the audience nudge, which was relatively unobtrusive. However, some participants found it more helpful than others. Alternatively, many participants found the more intrusive timer nudge (which caused a delay pop-up to appear before every post) annoying; however, a few participants found it useful.
Need for personalization

We plan to make privacy nudges more personalized by making them more goal-based. To do so we plan to draw from the broader personalized behavior-change literature to create interface modications and visualizations to help users meet stated goals for changing online-sharing behaviors. We plan to perform two phases of research. In the rst phase we plan to perform an exploratory, survey-based study to examine the types of goals users have for changing their sharing behavior on online social networks. In the second stage we will use the results of this study to iteratively design nudges to help users reach some commonly-desired goals and use a eld-testing approach to test the nudges with participants who have stated that they have such goals.
Exploratory study of goals

Based on feedback during the eld studies, as well as the varied success of the nudges, we saw that a one-size-t-all nudging approach was not adequate. How useful our eld study participants found various nudges depended both on their Facebook posting behaviors and privacy goals. 2

In the rst phase of our planned research (currently underway), we will perform an exploratory study of online social network users goals for changing their behaviors on online social networks. Broadly, this initial study is intended to answer several questions:

 Are online social network users able to identify their own goals for behavior change on online social networks? What types of goals do they identify? Do a subset of these identied goals apply to improving online-sharing/privacy behaviors? Are participants able to break identied goals down into actionable components? What are these components? How important or difcult do participants consider these goals? What benets do they hope to gain? Would it be possible (from our perspective) to build a nudging intervention to help users achieve these goals? To explore these questions we plan to run a Mechanical Turk survey with online social network (Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram) users. We will ask participants to identify one goal they have for changing their behavior on an online social network site, describe steps they would take towards that goal in the near future, rate the difculty of the goal, identify benets of achieving the goal, and identify factors that would make the goal more difcult or easier to achieve. We will also ask participants to rate whether they would like to achieve several goals drawn from prior work (e.g., Post less profanity). Based on the results of this study, we will determine a set of common privacy-related goals that participants would like to achieve (assuming they exist). We will use these results to inform the development of more personalized, goal-based nudging interventions.
Development of set of personalized privacy nudges

Once the nudges are developed we plan to test their effectiveness using a eld study approach (similar to [6, 8]) in which participants use of a social network is monitored over a period of time (e.g., six weeks), part of which includes the nudging intervention. We hope to measure behavior change toward the goals associated with the implementation of the intervention as well as solicit feedback from the participants.
WORKSHOP EXPECTATIONS

Our research group has been working on privacy nudges as a tool to encourage privacy-related behavior change on online social networks. However, we are moving toward the view that our behavior-change tools must be more personalized to be effective. As we develop our research plan, we feel that we would benet from talking to researchers from other elds who are also working on behavior-change technologies, as well as researchers who have more experience working on personalized behavior-change tools (e.g., for goal setting and self monitoring). As privacy/security researchers in this area we would also be interested in contributing our experiences working on behavior-change technologies to general discussion of the eld. Some topics we would specically be interested in discussing at the workshop include: We performed several eld studies of (non-personalized) privacy nudges and ran into challenges, including determining the success of the nudges (especially when desired outcome were unclear), as well general logistics like maintaining participant engagement. We would like to discuss methods for designing studies to evaluate personalized behavior-change tools, especially determining metrics when denitions of success are unclear. We focus on privacy behaviors, especially for online sharing. We are interested in discussing the applicability of behavior-change technologies used in other areas (e.g., health, nance, etc.) to areas like privacy or security where they are currently not commonly used (and vice versa). Under our current research approach we plan to ask participants about their online-sharing behavior-change goals and then try to match interventions to goals. However, users may be susceptible to privacy issues of which they are not aware. It is also not clear how to best design nudges to match goals. We would be interested in a discussion of how to best match interventions with goals, as well as when/how to identify interventions for users that they dont know they need in an effective and ethical manner (especially for potentially sensitive areas like privacy). Overall we would nd discussions about, and the compilation of best practices for, these topics benecial. Formally or informally we would also nd it helpful to hear about research being performed in this eld from researchers in different areas, as well as to have an opportunity to discuss our research with others.

Drawing on the results of our exploratory survey of online social network sharing goals we will iteratively design a more personalized set of goal-based privacy nudges. The nudges we develop will depend on the results of our exploratory goals study. Broadly we plan to personalize the nudges in two ways. First, we will develop nudges adapted to common privacy goals from our initial study. For example, if we nd the participants commonly state that they want to swear less when posting on online social networks we may develop a nudge that highlights profanity in posts to help them become aware of the profanity in the posts. We may also include a self-monitoring mechanism to help participants track their progress toward a goal. For the profanity example, we would visualize how often a participant swore over time, to help them see how well or how badly they were performing toward their goal. Second, depending on the goals, we may also further personalize nudges to better t participants personalities and needs. Again, for the example of a participant who wanted to swear less, we might allow the participant to select a set of words that they considered to be profanity and wanted us to help them reduce in their posts, rather than using a blanket set of profanity for all participants. In designing these nudges we plan to draw on related literature from other elds, such as goal setting and health interventions to inform our designs. 3

AUTHOR BIOS

Manya Sleeper is a fourth year Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon in the Computation, Organizations and Society program. Her research focuses on usable security and privacy with an emphasis on improving sharing decisions on online social networks. She has also done research on improving computer security dialogs and creating more usable accesscontrol systems for home environments. Pedro Leon is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on informing the design of privacy protection mechanisms that can help non-expert Internet users to protect their privacy. He has done research in the elds of online behavioral advertising, privacy standards, social media disclosures, and nancial privacy notices.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

2. Balebako, R., Leon, P. G., Almuhimedi, H., Kelley, P. G., Mugan, J., Acquisti, A., Cranor, L. F., and Sadeh, N. Nudging users towards privacy on mobile devices. In CHI Workshop Article (2011). 3. Joinson, A. N. Looking at, looking up or keeping up with people?: Motives and use of Facebook. In Proc. CHI, ACM (2008), 10271036. 4. Sleeper, M., Cranshaw, J., Kelley, P. G., Ur, B., Acquisti, A., Cranor, L. F., and Sadeh, N. I read my twitter the next morning and was astonished: A conversational perspective on Twitter regrets. In Proc. CHI, ACM (2013), 32773286. 5. Thaler, R. H., and Sunstein, C. R. Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness. Yale University Press, 2008. 6. Wang, Y., Komanduri, S., Leon, P. G., Norcie, G., Acquisti, A., and Cranor, L. F. I regretted the minute I pressed share: A qualitative study of regrets on Facebook. In Proc. SOUPS (2011). 7. Wang, Y., Leon, P. G., Acquisti, A., Cranor, L. F., Forget, A., and Sadeh, N. A eld trial of privacy nudges for Facebook (Forthcoming CHI 2014). 8. Wang, Y., Leon, P. G., Scott, K., Chen, X., Acquisti, A., Cranor, L. F., and Sadeh, N. Privacy nudges for social media: An exploratory Facebook study. PSOSM (2013).

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants No. 0946825, DGE0903659, and CNS-1012763 (Nudging Users Toward Privacy), as well as by Google under a Focused Research Award on Privacy Nudges, by IWT, and by the ARCS Foundation. We would also like to acknowledge our research collaborators: Alessandro Acquisti, Lorrie Cranor, Patrick Kelley, Florian Schaub, Norman Sadeh, and Yang Wang.
REFERENCES

1. Acquisti, A. Nudging privacy: The behavioral economics of personal information. Security & Privacy, IEEE 7, 6 (2009), 8285.