Understanding Privacy Visibility Dialectic in the Post-PIPL Era: Users’ Everyday Privacy Negotiations of (In-)Visibility on Digital Platforms

In 2021, China enacted its first Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL), requiring digital platforms to establish formal privacy compliance measures and signifying the PIPL as a distinctive model of global privacy governance. Given the paucity of research focusing on how user-centric perspectives perceive and negotiate privacy on platforms in the post-PIPL era, this study addresses this gap by drawing insights from interviews with 28 active users across five leading Chinese platforms. The findings indicate that users negotiate their personal information through interrelated strategies: privacy knowledge discourses, reflective sharing practices and protection mechanisms, and engagement in dynamics of (in-)visibility games by platform policies. We conceptualize these practices as a dialectic of privacy visibility, advancing human-computer interaction research by foregrounding users’ active role in privacy management. The article highlights practical implications for integrating user experiences into digital privacy literacy initiatives and fostering human-centered approaches to regulatory design.