Misinformation interventions are often evaluated under ideal conditions, yet real-world systems are rarely flawless. We report on an online experiment (N = 1, 004) comparing five state-of-the-art interventions – inoculation, accuracy prompt, community note, fact-check, and indicators – across TikTok, Telegram, and X. We examined efficacy and user perceptions under flawless and erroneous implementations. Misinformation accompanied by fact-checks and indicators was rated as significantly less accurate, while community notes showed weaker effects. Modality did not significantly influence intervention efficacy and had only minor effects on user acceptance. Community notes, fact-checks, and indicators were rated as more helpful but also more annoying than the less informative accuracy prompts. Notably, the efficacy of interventions disappeared under erroneous conditions. This highlights the crucial role of intervention quality in fostering trust and acceptance. Our findings provide (1) a cross-platform evaluation of interventions and (2) empirical evidence that accuracy and reliability are crucial in complex social media environments.

The ongoing challenge of misinformation on social media motivates ongoing efforts to find effective countermeasures. In this study, we evaluated the potential of personalised nudging to reduce the sharing of misinformation on social media, as personalised support has been successfully applied in other areas of critical information handling. In an online experiment (N = 396) exposing users to social media posts, we assessed the degree of misinformation sharing between groups receiving (1) no nudges, (2) non-personalised nudges, and (3) personalised nudges. Personalisation was based on three psychometric dimensions - general decision-making style, consideration of future consequences, need for cognition - to assign the most appropriate nudge from a pool of five nudges. The results showed significant differences (p < .05) between all three groups, with the personalised nudge group sharing the least misinformation. Detailed analyses at the nudge level revealed that one nudge was universally effective and two nudges were effective only in their personalised form. The results generally confirm the potential of personalisation, although the effect is limited in scope. These findings shed light on the nuanced results of nudging studies, highlight the benefits of personalisation, and raise ethical considerations regarding the privacy implications of personalisation and those inherent in nudges.

Misinformation poses a recurrent challenge for video-sharing platforms (VSPs) like TikTok. Obtaining user perspectives on digital interventions addressing the need for transparency (e.g., through indicators) is essential. This article offers a thorough examination of the comprehensibility, usefulness, and limitations of an indicator-based intervention from an adolescents’ perspective. This study (N = 39; aged 13-16 years) comprised two qualitative steps: (1) focus group discussions and (2) think-aloud sessions, where participants engaged with a smartphone-app for TikTok. The results offer new insights into how video-based indicators can assist adolescents’ assessments. The intervention received positive feedback, especially for its transparency, and could be applicable to new content. This paper sheds light on how adolescents are expected to be experts while also being prone to video-based misinformation, with limited understanding of an intervention’s limitations. By adopting teenagers’ perspectives, we contribute to HCI research and provide new insights into the chances and limitations of interventions for VSPs.

Nudging users to keep them secure online has become a growing research field in cybersecurity. While existing approaches are mainly blackbox based, showing aggregated visualisations as one-size-fits-all nudges, personalisation turned out promising to enhance the efficacy of nudges within the high variance of users and contexts. This article presents a disaggregated whitebox-based visualisation of critical information as a novel nudge. By segmenting users according to their decision-making and information processing styles, we investigate if the novel nudge is more effective for specific users than a common black-box nudge. Based on existing literature about critical factors in password security, we designed a dynamic radar chart and parallel coordinates as disaggregated visualisations. We evaluated the short-term effectiveness and users' perception of the nudges in a think-aloud prestudy and a representative online evaluation (N=1.012). Our findings suggest that dynamic radar charts present a moderately effective nudge towards stronger passwords regarding short-term efficacy and are appreciated particularly by players of role-playing games.