Reimagining Social Media Governance: Harm, Accountability, and Repair

Schoenebeck, Sarita; Blackwell, Lindsay

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3895779

Cited by 23 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Focus on rehabilitation. Platform governance has so far replicated the most punitive aspects of offline carceral governance, removing users from spaces without allowing rehabilitation and treating all offenders alike (Schoenebeck & Blackwell, 2021). Instead, platforms should acknowledge their importance in users’ working and personal lives, prioritizing agency—that is, allowing consenting users to choose whether to see nude content—instead of punitive measures such as shadowbanning, content deletion, and de-platforming.…”

Section: Conclusion and Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Emotional and Financial Impact of De-Platforming on Creators at the Margins

Are

Briggs

2023

Social Media + Society

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This study provides one of the first examples of de-platforming’s direct emotional and financial impact on Instagram and TikTok content creators at the margins. Both platforms provide significant opportunities toward creative and flexible work, allowing creators to maintain networks, promote work, express themselves and earn a living. However, their governance can severely disrupt certain forms of content creation, particularly for users who post online sex work and nude content. Through a qualitative survey, we gathered the experiences of 123 de-platformed Instagram and TikTok users who posted nude or sex work-related content. Our study provides crucial testimonies showing that the precarity of creator labor and platforms’ reliance on automated content moderation have negatively impacted creators’ well-being. Participants faced adverse psychological impacts resulting from job and income uncertainty, associated feelings of powerlessness, a loss of digital identity, and enforced isolation from a previously established social network. We conclude by providing platform governance recommendations based on these experiences.

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Section: Conclusion and Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Emotional and Financial Impact of De-Platforming on Creators at the Margins

Are

Briggs

2023

Social Media + Society

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“…As we observed above, platforms primarily seem to take reactive measures rather than pre‐emptive action and their approach belies a central interest in self‐preservation above repairing systemic harms. As noted by Schoenebeck and Blackwell, this is akin to Western frameworks of criminal justice that focus on identifying perpetrators of harm and punishing them, and which largely “overlook the needs and interests of targets of harassment and remove offenses and offenders from the community without any attempt at rehabilitation (Schoenebeck & Blackwell, 2021, p. 14). Such a paradigm equates unintentional rule‐breaking with intentional acts of harm and leaves no space for reeducation, rehabilitation, or forgiveness.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They observe that, conceptually, harm is not neutral and content moderation can be manipulated to propagate values or cultivate doubt, suggesting a need to move beyond removal of harmful content on the basis of official advice (2020). Another possibility is through a restorative form of justice which includes “mediated conversations between those who perpetrate and those who experience harm, typically with mediators and community members actively participating” (Schoenebeck & Blackwell, 2021). Such a system includes perpetrators by having them acknowledge and express remorse for wrongdoing.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Safe from “harm”: The governance of violence by platforms

et al. 2022

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A number of issues have emerged related to how platforms moderate and mitigate “harm.” Although platforms have recently developed more explicit policies in regard to what constitutes “hate speech” and “harmful content,” it appears that platforms often use subjective judgments of harm that specifically pertains to spectacular, physical violence—but harm takes on many shapes and complex forms. The politics of defining “harm” and “violence” within these platforms are complex and dynamic, and represent entrenched histories of how control over these definitions extends to people's perceptions of them. Via a critical discourse analysis of policy documents from three major platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube), we argue that platforms' narrow definitions of harm and violence are not just insufficient but result in these platforms engaging in a form of symbolic violence. Moreover, the platforms position harm as a floating signifier, imposing conceptions of not just what violence is and how it manifests, but who it impacts. Rather than changing the mechanisms of their design that enable harm, the platforms reconfigure intentionality and causality to try to stop users from being “harmful,” which, ironically, perpetuates harm. We provide a number of suggestions, namely a restorative justice‐focused approach, in addressing platform harm.

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“…Some harms are small and reparable, such as theft of a bicycle; others, such as loss of reputation or health, are irreparable and cannot be adequately compensated. Harms associated with technology have ranged from data harms to privacy harms to gendered harms (Citron, 2022; Scheuerman et al, 2021; Schoenebeck & Blackwell, 2021; Solove & Citron, 2017).…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Online Harassment: Assessing Harms and Remedies

Schoenebeck

Lampe

Triệu

2023

Social Media + Society

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Online harassment refers to a wide range of harmful behaviors, including hate speech, insults, doxxing, and non-consensual image sharing. Social media platforms have developed complex processes to try to detect and manage content that may violate community guidelines; however, less work has examined the types of harms associated with online harassment or preferred remedies to that harassment. We conducted three online surveys with US adult Internet users measuring perceived harms and preferred remedies associated with online harassment. Study 1 found greater perceived harm associated with non-consensual photo sharing, doxxing, and reputational damage compared to other types of harassment. Study 2 found greater perceived harm with repeated harassment compared to one-time harassment, but no difference between individual and group harassment. Study 3 found variance in remedy preferences by harassment type; for example, banning users is rated highly in general, but is rated lower for non-consensual photo sharing and doxxing compared to harassing family and friends and damaging reputation. Our findings highlight that remedies should be responsive to harassment type and potential for harm. Remedies are also not necessarily correlated with harassment severity—expanding remedies may allow for more contextually appropriate and effective responses to harassment.

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Reimagining Social Media Governance: Harm, Accountability, and Repair

Cited by 23 publications

References 6 publications

The Emotional and Financial Impact of De-Platforming on Creators at the Margins

The Emotional and Financial Impact of De-Platforming on Creators at the Margins

Safe from “harm”: The governance of violence by platforms

Online Harassment: Assessing Harms and Remedies

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