Last spring, privacy default settings made headline news. The unwitting Facebook user, it turns out, was choosing to disclose an ever increasing amount of personal information by not actively setting filters to opt out of over-sharing. By selecting this choice architecture, the management of Facebook was nudging its users to be more open with their accounts than they might otherwise have been. In their book Nudge, behavioral economists Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein [1] espouse a philosophy of "libertarian paternalism." Under such a paradigm, a paternal authority determines the "right" thing to do, then makes that decision by default for those under its purview. For example, most modern retirement plans offer automatic payroll deductions, by which a recurring contribution is made by default.
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