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Many researchers studying online communities seek to make them better. However, beyond a small set of widely-held values, such as combating misinformation and abuse, determining what 'better' means can be challenging, as community members…
Prior research on transparency in content moderation has demonstrated the benefits of offering post-removal explanations to sanctioned users. In this paper, we examine whether the influence of such explanations transcends those who are…
Social media are shifting towards pluralism -- community-governed platforms where groups define their own norms. What violates rules in one community may be perfectly acceptable in another. Can AI models help moderate such pluralistic…
Emotions play an important role in interpersonal interactions and social conflict, yet their function in the development of controversy and disagreement in online conversations has not been explored. To address this gap, we study…
Social media users may perceive moderation decisions by the platform differently, which can lead to frustration and dropout. This study investigates users' perceived justice and fairness of online moderation decisions when they are exposed…
Online communities rely on a mix of platform policies and community-authored rules to define acceptable behavior and maintain order. However, these rules vary widely across communities, evolve over time, and are enforced inconsistently,…
Moral dilemmas play an important role in theorizing both about ethical norms and moral psychology. Yet thought experiments borrowed from the philosophical literature often lack the nuances and complexity of real life. We leverage 100,000…
Effective content moderation in online communities is often a delicate balance between maintaining content quality and fostering user participation. In this paper, we introduce post guidance, a novel approach to community moderation that…
Shortcomings of current models of moderation have driven policy makers, scholars, and technologists to speculate about alternative models of content moderation. While alternative models provide hope for the future of online spaces, they can…
Online LGBTQ+ communities face a persistent tension: remaining visible to welcome newcomers while protecting members from harassment. This challenge is particularly acute for lesbian communities on Reddit, which operate not as isolated…
Generative AI is altering how we work, learn, communicate, and participate in online communities. How might online communities be changed by generative AI? To start addressing this question, we focused on online community moderators'…
Mental health forums are online communities where people express their issues and seek help from moderators and other users. In such forums, there are often posts with severe content indicating that the user is in acute distress and there…
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…
Accurately estimating how users respond to moderation interventions is paramount for developing effective and user-centred moderation strategies. However, this requires a clear understanding of which user characteristics are associated with…
Social media websites, electronic newspapers and Internet forums allow visitors to leave comments for others to read and interact. This exchange is not free from participants with malicious intentions, who troll others by positing messages…
Despite the common use of rule-based tools for online content moderation, human moderators still spend a lot of time monitoring them to ensure that they work as intended. Based on surveys and interviews with Reddit moderators who use…
Moderating user-generated content on online platforms is crucial for balancing user safety and freedom of speech. Particularly in the United States, platforms are not subject to legal constraints prescribing permissible content. Each…
As content moderation becomes a central aspect of all social media platforms and online communities, interest has grown in how to make moderation decisions contestable. On social media platforms where individual communities moderate their…
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)…
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…