Related papers: Behavior Change in Response to Subreddit Bans and …
Community-level bans are a common tool against groups that enable online harassment and harmful speech. Unfortunately, the efficacy of community bans has only been partially studied and with mixed results. Here, we provide a flexible…
Anti-social behaviors in social media can happen both at user and community levels. While a great deal of attention is on the individual as an 'aggressor,' the banning of entire Reddit subcommunities (i.e., subreddits) demonstrates that…
Social media platforms like Facebook and Reddit host thousands of user-governed online communities. These platforms sanction communities that frequently violate platform policies; however, public perceptions of such sanctions remain…
Community rules play a key part in enabling or constraining the behaviors of members in online communities. However, little is unknown regarding whether and to what degree changing rules actually affects community dynamics. In this paper,…
Harassing and hateful speech in online spaces has become a common problem for platform maintainers and their users. The toxicity created by such content can discourage user participation and engagement. Therefore, it is crucial for and a…
Online platforms face pressure to keep their communities civil and respectful. Thus, the bannings of problematic online communities from mainstream platforms like Reddit and Facebook are often met with enthusiastic public reactions.…
Most platforms, including Reddit, face a dilemma when applying interventions such as subreddit bans to toxic communities -- do they risk angering their user base by proactively enforcing stricter controls on discourse or do they defer…
In today's online environments, users encounter harm and abuse on a daily basis. Therefore, content moderation is crucial to ensure their safety and well-being. However, the effectiveness of many moderation interventions is still uncertain.…
This paper examines the shift in focus on content policies and user attitudes on the social media platform Reddit. We do this by focusing on comments from general Reddit users from five posts made by admins (moderators) on updates to Reddit…
Reddit administrators have generally struggled to prevent or contain such discourse for several reasons including: (1) the inability for a handful of human administrators to track and react to millions of posts and comments per day and (2)…
In the current landscape of online abuses and harms, effective content moderation is necessary to cultivate safe and inclusive online spaces. Yet, the effectiveness of many moderation interventions is still unclear. Here, we assess the…
Online platforms like Reddit, Wikipedia, and Facebook are integral to modern life, enabling content creation and sharing through posts, comments, and discussions. Despite their virtual and often anonymous nature, these platforms need rules…
Online social media foster the creation of active communities around shared narratives. Such communities may turn into incubators for conspiracy theories -- some spreading violent messages that could sharpen the debate and potentially harm…
We study the impact of content moderation policies in online communities. In our theoretical model, a platform chooses a content moderation policy and individuals choose whether or not to participate in the community according to the…
Developing a strong community requires empowered leadership capable of overcoming governance challenges. New online platforms have given users opportunities to practice governance through content moderation roles. The over 2.8 million…
When toxic online communities on mainstream platforms face moderation measures, such as bans, they may migrate to other platforms with laxer policies or set up their own dedicated websites. Previous work suggests that within mainstream…
While much attention has been devoted to the causes of opinion change, little is known about its consequences. Our study sheds a light on the relationship between one user's opinion change episode and subsequent behavioral change on an…
On Reddit, individual subreddits are used to organize content and connect users. One mode of interaction is the subreddit link, which occurs when a user makes a direct reference to a subreddit in another community. Based on the ubiquity of…
It has been a widely shared concern that social media reinforces echo chambers of like-minded users and exacerbate political polarization. While fostering interactions across party lines is recognized as an important strategy to break echo…
The proliferation of radical online communities and their violent offshoots has sparked great societal concern. However, the current practice of banning such communities from mainstream platforms has unintended consequences: (I) the further…