Do Privacy Controls Influence Content Generation and Sharing Patterns of Online Social Network Users? A Natural Experiment

In the age of social media, online social networks (OSNs), such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, are indispensable for the majority of Internet users. To some, OSNs are as essential to their lives as electricity. These platforms enable OSN users to share content including status updates, pictures videos, comments, tags, and messages, with other people. Although most OSNs have been frequently criticized by privacy groups for the lack of attention to and care for privacy of their users, these platforms have continued to make inroads to new user bases. Today, OSNs are one of the fastest growing and most visited sites on the Internet. Facebook, the largest OSN, has reached 1 billion active users in September 2012 (Fowler 2012).