Do You See If I See? Investigating Reciprocity in Interpersonal Access-Control Settings (in the U.S.)

People often share information with each other, motivated by mutual benefit. However, some interfaces force reciprocity by requiring users to reveal the same type of information they want to obtain. For example, in some social networks, a user can view someone’s profile only if they allow the other person to access theirs. Read receipts in many messaging apps follow the same pattern. These settings may be detrimental to privacy, since users are forced to reveal information that they may otherwise not wish to share. On the other hand, forced reciprocity may be beneficial, as it keeps interfaces simpler and enforces social norms of fairness. To understand how people perceive these trade-offs and make choices about reciprocal settings, we surveyed 802 participants from the U.S. about interpersonal access-control settings in three domains: read receipts in messaging apps, profile views in social networks, and data visibility settings in smart home devices. We found that forced reciprocity results in privacy losses, but many consider it fair, generally preferring reciprocal access-control settings to interfaces with more options. Our findings suggest that reciprocity is a potent motivator in privacy decision-making and has the potential to be useful as a mechanism in new privacy controls.