Chillbot: Content Moderation in the Backchannel
Author(s)
Seering, Joseph
Khadka, Manas
Haghighi, Nava
Yang, Tanya
Xi, Zachary
Bernstein, Michael
Date Issued
November 8, 2024
Journal
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
Publisher
ACM
Citation
Seering, Joseph, Khadka, Manas, Haghighi, Nava, Yang, Tanya, Xi, Zachary et al. 2024. "Chillbot: Content Moderation in the Backchannel." Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 8 (CSCW2).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Moderating online spaces effectively is not a matter of simply taking down content: moderators also provide private feedback and defuse situations before they cross the line into harm. However, moderators have little tool support for these activities, which often occur in the backchannel rather than in front of the entire community. In this paper, we introduce Chillbot, a moderation tool for Discord designed to facilitate backchanneling from moderators to users. With Chillbot, moderators gain the ability to send rapid anonymous feedback responses to situations where removal or formal punishment is too heavy-handed to be appropriate, helping educate users about how to improve their behavior while avoiding direct confrontations that can put moderators at risk. We evaluated Chillbot through a two week field deployment on eleven Discord servers ranging in size from 25 to over 240,000 members. Moderators in these communities used Chillbot more than four hundred times during the study, and moderators from six of the eleven servers continued using the tool past the end of the formal study period. Based on this deployment, we describe implications for the design of a broader variety of means by which moderation tools can help shape communities' norms and behavior.
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1145/3686941
