Collaborative Research: SaTC: CORE: Medium: Understanding the Impact of Privacy Interventions on the Online Publishing Ecosystem

该项目研究隐私干预对在线出版行业的影响。对网络隐私的普遍担忧促使世界各国政府颁布了新的隐私法规，并迫使企业实施自我监管的数据保护举措。虽然此类隐私干预通常受到公众的积极欢迎，但行业利益相关者表示，隐私干预可能会减少免费、广告支持的在线内容和服务的可用性。在线出版商及其提供内容的能力在民主社会中发挥着至关重要的作用。该项目整合了技术、组织、行为和经济研究，以调查隐私干预的实施如何影响出版商、他们的用户和各种下游经济结果。该项目旨在为学者、政策制定者和从业者提供见解，以理解和设计有效的隐私干预措施，而不会危及数字产品和服务。该项目利用与媒体公司的合作，授权访问来自大量异构网站的数据。本项目的新颖贡献包括：1)调查影响出版商遵守隐私干预的因素；2)创建一个开放的审计API，用于对出版商的系统进行自动远程合规审计；3)分析用户对隐私机制的反应，了解隐私倡议在多大程度上转化为用户可用的工具；4)调查隐私实施对用户粘性和体验的影响；5)调查隐私举措的实施如何影响出版商的在线广告收入；6)调查用户数据的收益如何在存在隐私倡议的在线出版生态系统中的利益相关者之间分配。与媒体公司的合作使研究成果能够快速转移到行业。研究结果被纳入在线隐私及其对出版商和社会影响的课程中。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The project studies the impact of privacy interventions on the online publishing industry. Widespread concerns over online privacy have led governments worldwide to enact new privacy regulations and have compelled firms to implement self-regulatory data-protection initiatives. While such privacy interventions are often positively received by the public, industry stakeholders have suggested that privacy interventions may reduce the availability of free, ad-supported online content and services. Online publishers and their ability to provide content play a crucial role in democratic societies. The project integrates technical, organizational, behavioral, and economic studies to investigate how the implementation of privacy interventions impacts publishers, their users, and various downstream economic outcomes. The project aims at providing insights for scholars, policy makers, and practitioners toward understanding and designing effective privacy interventions without endangering digital products and services. The project leverages collaborations with media companies granting access to data from a large set of heterogeneous websites. The novel contributions of the project include: 1) the investigation of factors influencing publishers’ compliance with privacy interventions; 2) the creation of an open auditing API for automated remote compliance auditing of publishers’ systems; 3) the analysis of users’ responses to privacy mechanisms to understand the extent to which privacy initiatives translate into usable tools for users; 4) the investigation of the impact of privacy implementations on user engagement and experience; 5) the investigation of how the implementation of privacy initiatives affects publishers’ revenues from online advertising; and 6) the investigation of how the gains from user data are allocated across the stakeholders in the online publishing ecosystem in the presence of privacy initiatives. The collaboration with media companies enables quick transfer of research findings to the industry. The results of the research are incorporated in courses on online privacy and its impact on publishers and society.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.