Audience curation features are another area where consent should be built-in. Features used to curate audiences are often designed from the perspective of the person sharing content, and don't consider whether the viewer consents to being part of a restricted audience. This is particularly problematic when NSFW is posted to restricted audiences without the consent of those included, but not necessarily benign when used for non-explicit content either.
Make people consent to being added to curated audiences
When adding someone to a curated audience, they should have to consent before seeing content that is shared to the list. This could be done at the time of addition, for example, by sending someone a notification that allows them to confirm or deny their addition. Alternatively, an overlay could be shown that blocks or blurs the first piece of content they see shared to that curated audience until they consent. In both cases, a way to see the label someone has given the audience could help people understand whether they want to be included or not. Of course, this means audience names should be flagged as publicly visible when they are created.
Allow people to advertise curated audience lists
People should be able to advertise curated audience lists so that people can opt-into being part of them. Ideally, this should be able to be shared with an existing list, for example, allowing one to advertise a story for a specific topic to one's close friends, as Snapchat currently offers. In addition, people should be able to advertise public lists on their profiles. As many of our participants described, they used stories with curated audiences for non-sensitive topics as a way to avoid spamming all their followers, for example, some described using them to talk about video games.
Let people opt-out of curated audiences
Audience curation features should allow people to opt-out at their own discretion.
The mockup on the right shows how Instagram's Close Friends feature could add a way to opt-out while the mockup on the far right shows how settings for a curated audience could show people who have opted out, and block them from being re-added without their consent.
