Related papers: One Style Does Not Regulate All: Moderation Practi…
WhatsApp is a popular messaging app used by over a billion users around the globe. Due to this popularity, understanding misbehavior on WhatsApp is an important issue. The sending of unwanted junk messages by unknown contacts via WhatsApp…
WhatsApp was alleged to be widely used to spread misinformation and propaganda during elections in Brazil and India. Due to the private encrypted nature of the messages on WhatsApp, it is hard to track the dissemination of misinformation at…
Political organizations worldwide keep innovating their use of social media technologies. In the 2019 Indian general election, organizers used a network of WhatsApp groups to manipulate Twitter trends through coordinated mass postings. We…
Millions of online communities are governed by volunteer moderators, who shape their communities by setting and enforcing rules, recruiting additional moderators, and participating in the community themselves. These moderators must…
Although Telegram is currently one of the most popular instant messaging apps in the world, previous studies have mainly focused on analysing discussions on specific angles and topics. In this paper, we present a broad analysis of publicly…
With the increasing use of smartphones, instant messaging platforms turned into important communication tools. According to WhatsApp, more than 100 billion messages are sent each day on the app. Communication on these platforms has allowed…
WhatsApp messenger is arguably the most popular mobile app available on all smart-phones. Over one billion people worldwide for free messaging, calling, and media sharing use it. In April 2016, WhatsApp switched to a default end-to-end…
Online community moderators are on the front lines of combating problems like hate speech and harassment, but new modes of interaction can introduce unexpected challenges. In this paper, we consider moderation practices and challenges in…
This paper analyzes the community safety guidelines of five text-to-image (T2I) generation platforms and audits five T2I models, focusing on prompts related to the representation of humans in areas that might lead to societal stigma. While…
In many online communities, community leaders (i.e., moderators and administrators) can proactively filter undesired content by requiring posts to be approved before publication. But although many communities adopt post approvals, there has…
In this dataset paper we describe our work on the collection and analysis of public WhatsApp group data. Our primary goal is to explore the feasibility of collecting and using WhatsApp data for social science research. We therefore present…
This study examines the failures and possibilities of contemporary social media governance through the lived experiences of various content moderation professionals. Drawing on participatory design workshops with 33 practitioners in both…
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…
WeChat is a mobile messaging application that has 549 million active users as of Q1 2015, and "WeChat Moments" (WM) serves its social-networking function that allows users to post/share links of web pages. WM differs from the other social…
Personal moderation tools on social media platforms let users control their news feeds by configuring acceptable toxicity thresholds for their feed content or muting inappropriate accounts. This research examines how four critical…
WhatsApp, with 3.5 billion active accounts as of early 2025, is the world's largest instant messaging platform. Given its massive user base, WhatsApp plays a critical role in global communication. To initiate conversations, users must first…
Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed as gateways to information, yet their content moderation practices remain underexplored. This work investigates the extent to which LLMs refuse to answer or omit information when…
Social media platforms increasingly employ proactive moderation techniques, such as detecting and curbing toxic and uncivil comments, to prevent the spread of harmful content. Despite these efforts, such approaches are often criticized for…
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…
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…