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Interdependent privacy (IDP) violations occur when users share personal information about others without permission, resulting in potential embarrassment, reputation loss, or harassment. There are several strategies that can be applied to protect IDP, but little is known regarding how social media users perceive IDP threats or how they prefer to respond to them. We utilized a mixed-method approach with a replication study to examine user beliefs about various government-, platform-, and user-level strategies for managing IDP violations. Participants reported that IDP represented a 'serious' online threat, and identified themselves as primarily responsible for responding to violations. IDP strategies that felt more familiar and provided greater perceived control over violations (e.g., flagging, blocking, unfriending) were rated as more effective than platform or government driven interventions. Furthermore, we found users were more willing to share on social media if they perceived their interactions as protected. Findings are discussed in relation to control paradox theory.
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Modeling User Characteristics Associated with Interdependent Privacy Perceptions on Social Media
‘Interdependent’ privacy violations occur when users share private photos and information about other people in social media without permission. This research investigated user characteristics associated with interdependent privacy perceptions, by asking social media users to rate photo-based memes depicting strangers on the degree to which they were too private to share. Users also completed questionnaires measuring social media usage and personality. Separate groups rated the memes on shareability, valence, and entertainment value. Users were less likely to share memes that were rated as private, except when the meme was entertaining or when users exhibited dark triad characteristics. Users with dark triad characteristics demonstrated a heightened awareness of interdependent privacy and increased sharing of others’ photos. A model is introduced that highlights user types and characteristics that correspond to different privacy preferences: privacy preservers, ignorers, and violators. We discuss how interventions to support interdependent privacy must effectively influence diverse users.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2053152
- PAR ID:
- 10408862
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction
- ISSN:
- 1073-0516
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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We investigate the effects of perspective taking, privacy cues, and portrayal of photo subjects (i.e., photo valence) on decisions to share photos of people via social media. In an online experiment we queried 379 participants about 98 photos (that were previously rated for photo valence) in three conditions: (1) Baseline: participants judged their likelihood of sharing each photo; (2) Perspective-taking: participants judged their likelihood of sharing each photo when cued to imagine they are the person in the photo; and (3) Privacy: participants judged their likelihood to share after being cued to consider the privacy of the person in the photo. While participants across conditions indicated a lower likelihood of sharing photos that portrayed people negatively, they – surprisingly – reported a higher likelihood of sharing photos when primed to consider the privacy of the person in the photo. Frequent photo sharers on real-world social media platforms and people without strong personal privacy preferences were especially likely to want to share photos in the experiment, regardless of how the photo portrayed the subject. A follow-up study with 100 participants explaining their responses revealed that the Privacy condition led to a lack of concern with others’ privacy. These findings suggest that developing interventions for reducing photo sharing and protecting the privacy of others is a multivariate problem in which seemingly obvious solutions can sometimes go awry.more » « less
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null (Ed.)This study tested the effect of visual attention on decision-making in digital environments. Fifty-nine individuals were asked how likely they would be to share 40 memes (photos with superimposed captions) on social media while their eye movements were tracked. The likelihood of sharing memes increased as attention to the text of the meme increased; conversely, the likelihood of sharing decreased as attention to the image of the meme increased. In addition, increased trait levels of agreeableness predicted a greater likelihood of sharing memes. These results indicate that individual differences in personality and eye movements predict the likelihood of sharing photo-memes on social media platforms.more » « less
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3577014
