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Social media platforms often rely on volunteer moderators to combat hate and harassment and create safe online environments. In the face of challenges combating hate and harassment, moderators engage in mutual support with one another. We conducted a qualitative content analysis of 115 hate and harassment-related threads from r/ModSupport and r/modhelp, two major subreddit forums for this type of mutual support. We analyze the challenges moderators face; complex tradeoffs related to privacy, utility, and harassment; and major challenges in the relationship between moderators and platform admins. We also present the first systematization of how platform features (including especially security, privacy, and safety features) are misused for online abuse, and drawing on this systematization we articulate design themes for platforms that want to resist such misuse. 

Volunteer moderators play a crucial role in safeguarding online communities, actively combating hate, harassment, and inappropriate content while enforcing community standards. Prior studies have examined moderation tools and practices, moderation challenges, and the emotional labor and burnout of volunteer moderators. However, researchers have yet to delve into the ways moderators support one another in combating hate and harassment within the communities they moderate through participation in meta-communities of moderators. To address this gap, we have conducted a qualitative content analysis of 115 hate and harassment-related threads from r/ModSupport and r/modhelp, two major subreddit forums for moderators for this type of mutual support. Our study reveals that moderators seek assistance on topics ranging from fighting attacks to understanding Reddit policies and rules to just venting their frustration. Other moderators respond to these requests by validating their frustration and challenges, showing emotional support, and providing information and tangible resources to help with their situation. Based on these findings, we share the implications of our work in facilitating platform and peer support for online volunteer moderators on Reddit and similar platforms. 

Transformative media fandom is a remarkably coherent, long-lived, and diverse community united primarily by shared engagement in the varied activities of fandom. Its social norms are highly-developed and frequently debated, and have been studied by the CSCW and Media Studies communities in the past, but rarely using the tools and theories of privacy, despite fannish norms often bearing strongly on privacy. We use privacy scholarship and existing theories thereof to examine these norms and bring an additional perspective to understanding fandom communities. In this work, we analyze over 250,000 words of meta'' essays and comments on those essays, reflecting the views and debates of hundreds of fans on these privacy norms. Drawing on Solove's theory of privacy as an aggregation of different ideas and on a variety of other academic theories of privacy, we analyze these norms as highly effective at protecting the integrity of fannish activities. We then articulate the value of studying these sorts of diverse activity-defined'' communities, arguing that such approaches grant us greater power to understand privacy experiences in ways that are specific, contextual, and intersectional yet still generalizable where possible.