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In recent years, social media companies have grappled with defining and enforcing content moderation policies surrounding political content on their platforms, due in part to concerns about political bias, disinformation, and polarization.…
Social media platform design often incorporates explicit signals of positive feedback. Some moderators provide positive feedback with the goal of positive reinforcement, but are often unsure of their ability to actually influence user…
Due to the worldwide accessibility to the Internet along with the continuous advances in mobile technologies, physical and digital worlds have become completely blended, and the proliferation of social media platforms has taken a leading…
At a time when information seekers first turn to digital sources for news and opinion, it is critical that we understand the role that social media plays in human behavior. This is especially true when information consumers also act as…
We analyze gendered communities defined in three different ways: text, users, and sentiment. Differences across these representations reveal facets of communities' distinctive identities, such as social group, topic, and attitudes. Two…
This paper investigates how content moderation affects content creation in an ideologically diverse online environments. We develop a model in which users act as both creators and consumers, differing in their ideological affiliation and…
Online harassment and content moderation have been well-documented in online communities. However, new contexts and systems always bring new ways of harassment and need new moderation mechanisms. This study focuses on hate raids, a form of…
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 have transformed the dynamics of collective opinion formation, enabling rapid, large-scale interactions while simultaneously exposing online discourse to polarization and manipulation. Traditional models of opinion…
TikTok has seen exponential growth as a platform, fuelled by the success of its proprietary recommender algorithm which serves tailored content to every user - though not without controversy. Users complain of their content being unfairly…
We consider the problem of how a platform designer, owner, or operator can improve the design and operation of a digital platform by leveraging a computational cognitive model that represents users's folk theories about a platform as a…
We investigate the impact of free speech and the relaxation of moderation on online social media platforms using Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter as a case study. By curating a dataset of over 10 million tweets, our study employs a novel…
The rise of social media platforms has led to an increase in cyber-aggressive behavior, encompassing a broad spectrum of hostile behavior, including cyberbullying, online harassment, and the dissemination of offensive and hate speech. These…
On social media, several individuals experiencing suicidal ideation (SI) do not disclose their distress explicitly. Instead, signs may surface indirectly through everyday posts or peer interactions. Detecting such implicit signals early is…
Social media platforms have become central to modern communication, yet they also harbor offensive content that challenges platform safety and inclusivity. While prior research has primarily focused on textual indicators of offense, the…
Content safety teams need metrics that reflect what users actually experience, not only what is reported. We study prevalence: the fraction of user views (impressions) that went to content violating a given policy on a given day. Accurate…
While online social media offers a way for ignored or stifled voices to be heard, it also allows users a platform to spread hateful speech. Such speech usually originates in fringe communities, yet it can spill over into mainstream…
How are Reddit communities responding to AI-generated content? We explored this question through a large-scale analysis of subreddit community rules and their change over time. We collected the metadata and community rules for over…
Harmful or abusive online content has been increasing over time, raising concerns for social media platforms, government agencies, and policymakers. Such harmful or abusive content can have major negative impact on society, e.g.,…
Online communities are constantly growing, with dozens of platforms housing millions of users. Large and small communities alike rely on volunteer moderators to maintain order. Despite their key role, moderators are given a toolbox of…