Mind-proofing Your Phone: Navigating the Digital Minefield with GreaseTerminator

TL;DR

This paper introduces GreaseTerminator, a tool that helps researchers develop and test user interface interventions to mitigate digital harms on mobile devices, demonstrated through five case studies.

Contribution

It presents a novel framework for creating and deploying interventions against digital harms on smartphones, enhancing user safety and well-being.

Findings

Easy development and deployment of interventions

Broad applicability across multiple digital harms

Successful case studies demonstrating effectiveness

Abstract

Digital harms are widespread in the mobile ecosystem. As these devices gain ever more prominence in our daily lives, so too increases the potential for malicious attacks against individuals. The last line of defense against a range of digital harms - including digital distraction, political polarisation through hate speech, and children being exposed to damaging material - is the user interface. This work introduces GreaseTerminator to enable researchers to develop, deploy, and test interventions against these harms with end-users. We demonstrate the ease of intervention development and deployment, as well as the broad range of harms potentially covered with GreaseTerminator in five in-depth case studies.