Related papers: No Love Among Haters: Negative Interactions Reduce…
Most social network analysis works at the level of interactions between users. But the vast growth in size and complexity of social networks enables us to examine interactions at larger scale. In this work we use a dataset of 76M…
Toxic comments are the top form of hate and harassment experienced online. While many studies have investigated the types of toxic comments posted online, the effects that such content has on people, and the impact of potential defenses, no…
When large social-media platforms allow users to easily form and self-organize into interest groups, highly related communities can arise. For example, the Reddit site hosts not just a group called food, but also HealthyFood, foodhacks,…
Hate speech (HS) erodes the inclusiveness of online users and propagates negativity and division. Counterspeech has been recognized as a way to mitigate the harmful consequences. While some research has investigated the impact of…
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…
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…
Online communities can serve as meaningful sources of social support, particularly for marginalized and vulnerable groups. Disclosure of personal information facilitates integration into online communities but may also expose individuals to…
Online debates are often characterised by extreme polarisation and heated discussions among users. The presence of hate speech online is becoming increasingly problematic, making necessary the development of appropriate countermeasures. In…
Disagreement and conflict are a fact of social life and considerably affect our well-being and productivity. Such negative interactions are rarely explicitly declared and recorded and this makes them hard for scientists to study. We…
The Web has become the main source for news acquisition. At the same time, news discussion has become more social: users can post comments on news articles or discuss news articles on other platforms like Reddit. These features empower and…
An increasing amount of attention has been devoted to the problem of "toxic" or antisocial behavior on social media. In this paper we analyze such behavior at very large scales: we analyze toxicity over a 14-year time span on nearly 500…
Generative AI chatbots have proven surprisingly effective at persuading people to change their beliefs and attitudes in lab settings. However, the practical implications of these findings are not yet clear. In this work, we explore the…
With increasing attention to online anti-social behaviors such as personal attacks and bigotry, it is critical to have an accurate accounting of how widespread anti-social behaviors are. In this paper, we empirically measure the prevalence…
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)…
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,…
Extremist communities increasingly rely on social media to sustain and amplify divisive discourse. However, the relationship between their internal participation structures, audience engagement, and narrative expression remains…
In recent years, online communities have formed around suicide and self-harm prevention. While these communities offer support in moment of crisis, they can also normalize harmful behavior, discourage professional treatment, and instigate…
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…
Social media algorithms are thought to amplify variation in user beliefs, thus contributing to radicalization. However, quantitative evidence on how algorithms and user preferences jointly shape harmful online engagement is limited. I…
This report provides an engagement analysis of counternarratives against online toxicity. Between February 2020 and July 2021, we observed over 15 million toxic messages on social media identified by our fine-grained, multilingual detection…