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Content Removal as a Moderation Strategy: Compliance and Other Outcomes in the ChangeMyView Community

Authors:

Kumar Bhargav Srinivasan,

Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil,

Chenhao TanAuthors Info & Claims

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Volume 3, Issue CSCW

Article No.: 163, Pages 1 - 21

https://doi.org/10.1145/3359265

Published: 07 November 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Moderators of online communities often employ comment deletion as a tool. We ask here whether, beyond the positive effects of shielding a community from undesirable content, does comment removal actually cause the behavior of the comment's author to improve? We examine this question in a particularly well-moderated community, the ChangeMyView subreddit.

The standard analytic approach of interrupted time-series analysis unfortunately cannot answer this question of causality because it fails to distinguish the effect of having made a non-compliant comment from the effect of being subjected to moderator removal of that comment. We therefore leverage a "delayed feedback" approach based on the observation that some users may remain active between the time when they posted the non-compliant comment and the time when that comment is deleted. Applying this approach to such users, we reveal the causal role of comment deletion in reducing immediate noncompliance rates, although we do not find evidence of it having a causal role in inducing other behavior improvements. Our work thus empirically demonstrates both the promise and some potential limits of content removal as a positive moderation strategy, and points to future directions for identifying causal effects from observational data.

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Index Terms

Content Removal as a Moderation Strategy: Compliance and Other Outcomes in the ChangeMyView Community
1. Applied computing
  1. Law, social and behavioral sciences

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cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction Volume 3, Issue CSCW

November 2019

5026 pages

EISSN:2573-0142

DOI:10.1145/3371885

Editors:
Airi Lampinen
Stockholm University, Sweden
,
Darren Gergle
Northwestern University, USA
,
David A. Shamma
FXPAL, USA

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Copyright © 2019 ACM.

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Publication History

Published: 07 November 2019

Published in PACMHCI Volume 3, Issue CSCW

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Bulat BWang HFujimoto SFrey S(2024)The psychology of volunteer moderators: Tradeoffs between participation, belonging, and norms in online community governanceNew Media & Society10.1177/14614448241259028Online publication date: 29-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448241259028
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Lambert CChoi FChandrasekharan E(2024)"Positive reinforcement helps breed positive behavior": Moderator Perspectives on Encouraging Desirable BehaviorProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36869298:CSCW2(1-33)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
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