Automated Content Regulation on Reddit

Faculty: 
Amy Bruckman
Students: 
Shagun Jhaver

Significant amounts of content posted on Reddit are deleted as inappropriate by either a volunteer human moderator or a configurable, automated program called 'Automoderator' ('Automod'). How was this sociotech- nical system created, how does it work, and what lessons can we learn from it? We participated as Reddit moderators for over a year, and conducted interviews with 16 Reddit moderators to understand Autmod in the context of the sociotechnical system of Reddit. Our findings suggest a need for audit tools to help tune the performance of automated systems, a repository for sharing tools, and doing a better job of division of labor between human and machine decision making. Finally, we suggest that a more 'seamful' design can better balance users' desire for transparency and moderators' need to operate efficiently in an often adversarial environment.

Lab: 
Faculty: 
Amy Bruckman

The concept that people learn best when they are making something personally meaningful - also known as constructionism - is the lab's guiding philosophy. Computer networks have the potential to facilitate community-supported constructionist learning. The Electronic Learning Communities Lab examines ways communities of learners can motivate and support one another's learning experiences.