Kik — Privacy Controls
A safety feature that lets people explore public groups without opening the door to strangers.
Overview
Joining a public group on Kik handed every member a direct line to your DMs. Public groups are rooms anyone can join, and one of the main ways people find each other on the messenger. For some, an open inbox is the point. For others it is the creep at the party following you to the kitchen. My job was to let people shut that door without leaving the room. We shipped it, then reshaped it when the data said we had built it the wrong way round.
The announcement when the setting shipped.
Where it started
Users loved the groups. They did not like the side effect: a stranger now had a direct line to them. The reviews said it plainly. This was not an annoyance. It was a reason people felt unsafe, and unsafe people leave.
The design challenge
Safety settings have a trap: the people who need them most never go hunting for them. So two questions. Turn DMs off everywhere at once, or group by group? And does the control live in global Privacy, or in the group, where the discomfort actually happens?
The global switch looked simpler, so we shipped that first.
V1: one switch in Privacy settings, and a note in the group pointing to it.
Then we asked. The feature was wanted: 83% liked having the control. But the all-or-nothing switch was the wrong shape. 89% wanted to turn DMs on or off per group, the highest number in the study. It makes sense. You might chat openly in your hiking group and stay sealed off in a 300-person channel. V1 gave people a light switch for the whole house when they wanted one for each room.
V2: the toggle in Group Info, next to notifications.
What it grew into
V2 moved the control into the group. A "Receive Direct Messages" toggle in the group info screen, next to notifications, no menu-diving. Open where you want to be open. Closed where you do not. And it shows on your profile: with messages off, the door reads as shut.
Messages off for this group, and what a member sees on your profile.
Messages on, and Start Chatting is back.
Outcome
- 83% of people surveyed liked having the control. 89% wanted it per group. V2 shipped per group.
- "It keeps the creeps away." A user, 18, in the reviews.
What I learned
Safety is not one wall you build once. It is a set of small, situational choices, and the best thing you can do is hand people the controls and trust them to know their own rooms. It made Kik feel better to be on. Which was the whole job.