No abstract

Reddit has found its communities playing a prominent role in originating and propagating problematic sociopolitical discourse. Reddit administrators have generally struggled to prevent or contain such discourse for several reasons including: (1) the inability for a handful of human administrators to track and react to millions of posts and comments per day and (2) fear of backlash as a consequence of administrative decisions to ban or quarantine hateful communities. Consequently, administrative actions (community bans and quarantines) are often taken only when problematic discourse within a community spills over into the real world with serious consequences. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of deploying tools to proactively identify problematic communities on Reddit. Proactive identification strategies show promise for three reasons: (1) they have potential to reduce the manual efforts required to track communities for problematic content, (2) they give administrators a scientific rationale to back their decisions and interventions, and (3) they facilitate early and more nuanced interventions (than banning or quarantining) to mitigate problematic discourse.

The algorithms and the interactions facilitated by online platforms have been used by radical groups to recruit vulnerable individuals to their cause. This has resulted in the sharp growth of violent events and deteriorating online discourse. The Manosphere, a collection of radical anti-feminist communities, is one such group which has attracted attention due to their rapid growth and increasingly violent real world outbursts. In this paper, we examine the social engagements between Reddit users who have participated in feminist discourse and the Manosphere communities on Reddit to understand the process of development of traits associated with the adoption of extremist ideologies. By using existing research on the psychology of radicalization we track how specific types of social engagement with the Manosphere influence the development of traits associated with radicalization. Our findings show that: (1) participation, even by the simple act of joining the Manosphere, has a significant influence on the language and outlook traits of a user, (2) Manosphere elites are extremely effective propagators of radical traits and cause their increase even outside the Manosphere, and (3) community perception can heavily influence a user's behavior. Finally, we examine how our findings can help draft community and platform moderation policies to help mitigate the problem of online radicalization.

The algorithms and the interactions facilitated by online platforms have been used by radical groups to recruit vulnerable individuals to their cause. This has resulted in the sharp growth of violent events and deteriorating online discourse. The Manosphere, a collection of radical anti-feminist communities, is one such group that has attracted attention due to its rapid growth and increasingly violent real-world outbursts. In this paper, we examine the social engagements between Reddit users who have participated in feminist discourse and the Manosphere communities on Reddit to understand the process of development of traits associated with the adoption of extremist ideologies. By using existing research on the psychology of radicalization we track how specific types of social engagement with the Manosphere influence the development of traits associated with radicalization. Our findings show that: (1) participation, even by the simple act of joining the Manosphere, has a significant influence on the language and outlook traits of a user, (2) Manosphere elites are extremely effective propagators of radical traits and cause their increase even outside the Manosphere, and (3) community perception can heavily influence a user's behavior. Finally, we examine how our findings can help draft community and platform moderation policies to help mitigate the problem of online radicalization.

Most platforms, including Reddit, face a dilemma when applying interventions such as subreddit bans to toxic communities — do they risk angering their user base by proactively enforcing stricter controls on discourse or do they defer interventions at the risk of eventually triggering negative media reactions which might impact their advertising revenue? In this paper, we analyze Reddit’s previous administrative interventions to understand one aspect of this dilemma: the relationship between the media and administrative interventions. More specifically, we make two primary contributions. First, using a mediation analysis framework, we find evidence that Reddit’s interventions for violating their content policy for toxic content occur because of media pressure. Second, using interrupted time series analysis, we show that media attention on communities with toxic content only increases the problematic behavior associated with that community (both within the community itself and across the platform). However, we find no significant difference in the impact of administrative interventions on subreddits with and without media pressure. Taken all together, this study provides evidence of a media-driven moderation strategy at Reddit and also suggests that such a strategy may not have a significantly different impact than a more proactive strategy.