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1. Commercial Versus Volunteer: Comparing User Perceptions of Toxicity and Transparency in Content Moderation Across Social Media Platforms

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fhumd.2021.626409  

   Cook, Christine L.; Patel, Aashka; Wohn, Donghee Yvette (February 2021, Frontiers in Human Dynamics)

   null (Ed.)

   Content moderation is a critical service performed by a variety of people on social media, protecting users from offensive or harmful content by reviewing and removing either the content or the perpetrator. These moderators fall into one of two categories: employees or volunteers. Prior research has suggested that there are differences in the effectiveness of these two types of moderators, with the more transparent user-based moderation being useful for educating users. However, direct comparisons between commercially-moderated and user-moderated platforms are rare, and apart from the difference in transparency, we still know little about what other disparities in user experience these two moderator types may create. To explore this, we conducted cross-platform surveys of over 900 users of commercially-moderated (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube) and user-moderated (Reddit and Twitch) social media platforms. Our results indicated that although user-moderated platforms did seem to be more transparent than commercially-moderated ones, this did not lead to user-moderated platforms being perceived as less toxic. In addition, commercially-moderated platform users want companies to take more responsibility for content moderation than they currently do, while user-moderated platform users want designated moderators and those who post on the site to take more responsibility. Across platforms, users seem to feel powerless and want to be taken care of when it comes to content moderation as opposed to engaging themselves. 

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2. Addressing Interpersonal Harm in Online Gaming Communities: The Opportunities and Challenges for a Restorative Justice Approach

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3603625  

   Xiao, Sijia; Jhaver, Shagun; Salehi, Niloufar (September 2023, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction)

   Most social media platforms implement content moderation to address interpersonal harms such as harassment. Content moderation relies on offender-centered, punitive approaches, e.g., bans and content removal. We consider an alternative justice framework, restorative justice, which aids victims in healing, supports offenders in repairing the harm, and engages community members in addressing the harm collectively. To assess the utility of restorative justice in addressing online harm, we interviewed 23 users from Overwatch gaming communities, including moderators, victims, and offenders; such communities are particularly susceptible to harm, with nearly three quarters of all online game players suffering from some form of online abuse. We study how the communities currently handle harm cases through the lens of restorative justice and examine their attitudes toward implementing restorative justice processes. Our analysis reveals that cultural, technical, and resource-related obstacles hinder implementation of restorative justice within the existing punitive framework despite online community needs and existing structures to support it. We discuss how current content moderation systems can embed restorative justice goals and practices and overcome these challenges. 

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3. Content Moderation Folk Theories And Perceptions of Platform Spirit Among Marginalized Social Media Users

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3632741  

   Mayworm, Samuel; DeVito, Michael Ann; Delmonaco, Dan; Thach, Hibby; Haimson, Oliver L. (December 2023, ACM Transactions on Social Computing)

   Social media users create folk theories to help explain how elements of social media operate. Marginalized social media users face disproportionate content moderation and removal on social media platforms. We conducted a qualitative interview study (n = 24) to understand how marginalized social media users may create folk theories in response to content moderation and their perceptions of platforms’ spirit, and how these theories may relate to their marginalized identities. We found that marginalized social media users develop folk theories informed by their perceptions of platforms’ spirit to explain instances where their content was moderated in ways that violate their perceptions of how content moderation should work in practice. These folk theories typically address content being removed despite not violating community guidelines, along with bias against marginalized users embedded in guidelines. We provide implications for platforms, such as using marginalized users’ folk theories as tools to identify elements of platform moderation systems that function incorrectly and disproportionately impact marginalized users. 

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4. "I'm not sure what difference is between their content and mine, other than the person itself": A Study of Fairness Perception of Content Moderation on YouTube

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3555150  

   Ma, Renkai; Kou, Yubo (November 2022, Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction)

   How social media platforms could fairly conduct content moderation is gaining attention from society at large. Researchers from HCI and CSCW have investigated whether certain factors could affect how users perceive moderation decisions as fair or unfair. However, little attention has been paid to unpacking or elaborating on the formation processes of users' perceived (un)fairness from their moderation experiences, especially users who monetize their content. By interviewing 21 for-profit YouTubers (i.e., video content creators), we found three primary ways through which participants assess moderation fairness, including equality across their peers, consistency across moderation decisions and policies, and their voice in algorithmic visibility decision-making processes. Building upon the findings, we discuss how our participants' fairness perceptions demonstrate a multi-dimensional notion of moderation fairness and how YouTube implements an algorithmic assemblage to moderate YouTubers. We derive translatable design considerations for a fairer moderation system on platforms affording creator monetization. 

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5. Building a Pillowfort: Political Tensions in Platform Design and Policy

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3492835  

   Dym, Brianna; Pasupuleti, Namita; Fiesler, Casey (January 2022, Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction)

   Social media platforms make trade-offs in their design and policy decisions to attract users and stand out from other platforms. These decisions are influenced by a number of considerations, e.g. what kinds of content moderation to deploy or what kinds of resources a platform has access to. Their choices play into broader political tensions; social media platforms are situated within a social context that frames their impact, and they can have politics through their design that enforce power structures and serve existing authorities. We turn to Pillowfort, a small social media platform, to examine these political tensions as a case study. Using a discourse analysis, we examine public discussion posts between staff and users as they negotiate the site's development over a period of two years. Our findings illustrate the tensions in navigating the politics that users bring with them from previous platforms, the difficulty of building a site's unique identity and encouraging commitment, and examples of how design decisions can both foster and break trust with users. Drawing from these findings, we discuss how the success and failure of new social media platforms are impacted by political influences on design and policy decisions. 

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