The Privacy Placebo: Diagnosing Consent Burden through Performative Scrolling

TL;DR

This paper introduces the Performative Scrolling Index (PSI), a metric to diagnose interface burden in privacy consent interactions, revealing how design choices can increase friction without enhancing user understanding.

Contribution

The paper presents PSI, a reproducible, decomposable metric for measuring pre-choice burden in privacy interfaces, along with an audit protocol and deployment analysis.

Findings

Structural design choices increase pre-choice friction.

PSI effectively decomposes burden into observable components.

Design improvements can reduce friction without affecting comprehension.

Abstract

While consent banners and privacy policies invite users to read and choose, many choices are shaped by repeated, low-yield interaction routines rather than deliberation. This paper studies performative scrolling: slow, low-information interaction that can signal attention to consent without substantially improving understanding. We present the Performative Scrolling Index (PSI), a reproducible interface-audit metric for measuring pre-choice burden before a meaningful non-accepting alternative becomes visible and actionable. PSI decomposes burden into four observable components: distance, time, focus loops, and hidden reveals. In this paper, PSI is the primary burden metric, while companion signals such as AAI, CSI, and divergence are used as secondary interpretive audit aids rather than standalone validated scales. We also provide a least-effort audit protocol, design-side invariants, a worked example, and a medium-scale live deployment across desktop and mobile conditions under pointer and keyboard traversal policies. Together, these analyses show how structural choices such as offscreen alternatives, fragmented disclosure, and staged modal flows can increase pre-choice friction without improving meaningful control. PSI is not a measure of comprehension or legal sufficiency; rather, it is a diagnostic of interface-side burden intended to support reproducible audits and redesigns.