Awareness, Navigation, and Use of Feed Control Settings Online

Control settings are abundant and have significant effects on user experiences. One example of an impactful but understudied area is feed settings. In this study, we investigated awareness, navigation, and use of feed settings. We began by creating a taxonomy of feed settings on social media and search sites. Via an online survey, we measured awareness of Facebook feed settings. An in-person interview study then investigated how people navigated to and chose to set feed settings on their own feeds. We discovered that many participants did not believe ad personalization feed settings existed. Furthermore, we discovered a misalignment in the expectation and the function of settings, especially of ad personalization settings for many participants. Despite all participants struggling to find at least one setting, participants overall wanted to use settings: 94% altered at least one setting they encountered. From these results, we discuss implications and suggest design guidelines for settings.