Prominence Reduction versus Banning: An Empirical Investigation of Content Moderation Strategies in Online Platforms

Online platforms have adopted various types of content moderation strategies to combat antisocial behaviors such as verbal aggression. This study focuses on two types of strategies: group prominence reduction and banning. This study aims to provide a holistic picture of all downstream effects of these strategies. Additionally, we assess the differential effects of content moderation on multihoming versus non-multihoming users. Preliminary findings indicate that prominence reduction strategies applied to a problematic group have the adverse effect of increasing verbal aggression in outside spaces. Banning strategies differentially impact multihoming versus non-multihoming users. These findings have important implications, as they show that group prominence reduction strategies produce negative spillover effects, and the behavior of multihoming users on multiple external platforms, and whether our results generalize across multiple contexts

Platform Design Strategies and Implications for User Behaviors

This work examines how the design, features, and moderation policies of online platforms impact user behavior in myriad ways and have significant externalities on society at large. The first two studies examine the effectiveness of different content moderation policies adopted by user-generated content platforms to address issues related to misinformation and verbal aggression, respectively. The third study examines how the design of financial incentive structures affects the behaviors of users on a crowdsourcing platform. The studies produce theoretical implications regarding human behavior on online platforms, from the spreading of misinformation to interpersonal verbal aggression, to the behavioral response to monetary rewards. I additionally make recommendations for practitioners regarding optimal platform design and policies

Altruistically Misinformed: Fighting Misinformation on Social Media with Prominence Reduction Strategies

Misinformation often has dire real-world consequences, so user-generated content (UGC) platforms have adopted misinformation mitigation strategies aimed at protecting their users. We study Reddit’s quarantine policy, a prominence reduction strategy that reduces the visibility of misinformation on the platform. We empirically assess the effectiveness, as well as spillover effects, of quarantine. We conceptualize misinformation spreading within problematic communities as being motivated by impure altruistic preferences. We further conceptualize user reactions to quarantine using attachment theory. We find for low-attachment behavior, quarantine diminishes misinformation contribution in the quarantined forum and pushes it to a topically related but ideologically neutral forums. For high-attachment behavior, quarantine does not affect misinformation contribution in the quarantined forum but increases the dispersion of misinformation on the platform. Our research sheds light on the efficacy, as well as potentially unintended consequences, of using prominence reduction strategies to fight misinformation