TY - GEN
T1 - Automated Content Moderation Increases Adherence to Community Guidelines
AU - Horta Ribeiro, Manoel
AU - Cheng, Justin
AU - West, Robert
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 ACM.
PY - 2023/4/30
Y1 - 2023/4/30
N2 - Online social media platforms use automated moderation systems to remove or reduce the visibility of rule-breaking content. While previous work has documented the importance of manual content moderation, the effects of automated content moderation remain largely unknown. Here, in a large study of Facebook comments (n = 412M), we used a fuzzy regression discontinuity design to measure the impact of automated content moderation on subsequent rule-breaking behavior (number of comments hidden/deleted) and engagement (number of additional comments posted). We found that comment deletion decreased subsequent rule-breaking behavior in shorter threads (20 or fewer comments), even among other participants, suggesting that the intervention prevented conversations from derailing. Further, the effect of deletion on the affected user's subsequent rule-breaking behavior was longer-lived than its effect on reducing commenting in general, suggesting that users were deterred from rule-breaking but not from commenting. In contrast, hiding (rather than deleting) content had small and statistically insignificant effects. Our results suggest that automated content moderation increases adherence to community guidelines.
AB - Online social media platforms use automated moderation systems to remove or reduce the visibility of rule-breaking content. While previous work has documented the importance of manual content moderation, the effects of automated content moderation remain largely unknown. Here, in a large study of Facebook comments (n = 412M), we used a fuzzy regression discontinuity design to measure the impact of automated content moderation on subsequent rule-breaking behavior (number of comments hidden/deleted) and engagement (number of additional comments posted). We found that comment deletion decreased subsequent rule-breaking behavior in shorter threads (20 or fewer comments), even among other participants, suggesting that the intervention prevented conversations from derailing. Further, the effect of deletion on the affected user's subsequent rule-breaking behavior was longer-lived than its effect on reducing commenting in general, suggesting that users were deterred from rule-breaking but not from commenting. In contrast, hiding (rather than deleting) content had small and statistically insignificant effects. Our results suggest that automated content moderation increases adherence to community guidelines.
KW - community guidelines
KW - content moderation
KW - online platforms
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85159345271&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85159345271&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3543507.3583275
DO - 10.1145/3543507.3583275
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85159345271
T3 - ACM Web Conference 2023 - Proceedings of the World Wide Web Conference, WWW 2023
SP - 2666
EP - 2676
BT - ACM Web Conference 2023 - Proceedings of the World Wide Web Conference, WWW 2023
PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
T2 - 32nd ACM World Wide Web Conference, WWW 2023
Y2 - 30 April 2023 through 4 May 2023
ER -