A prompt telling users that trolls may be there, but they are uncommon.

Message that trolls are present but outnumbered

Reassure community newcomers; make them resilient to trolling

Our confidence rating

Likely

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What It Is

This simple intervention is a message for new users of a platform or new members of an online community.

It has three key elements:

  1. A link to what is considered trolling in the community or platform
  2. A warning that users will sometimes see trolling, but that non-trolls outnumber the trolls
  3. Instructions for how to handle trolls

When To Use It

This can appear as an automated comment to a new user's post, as an automated personal message, or as an interstitial upon entry.

What Is Its Intended Impact

This intervention has been shown to:

  1. Increase retention of users who join the community in good faith. Those know beforehand that trolls are present and have the tools to deal with them are less likely to be scared away from the platform by harassment. (CAT Lab 2020)
  2. Increase proportion of good-faith users relative to those who join as provocateurs, &c. Where this intervention was used, the increase in retention was limited to those who actively identified with the mission of the community - retention did not increase among those revealed not to be joining in good faith. (CAT Lab 2020)

Evidence That It Works

Evidence That It Works

Researchers at Cornell's Citizen and Technology Lab conducted a two-year project with r/feminism on Reddit to test an idea for reducing harassment. After presenting 1,300 users with this intervention, they found that messages explaining that harassers were a minority increased newcomer comments by 20% on average. This effect persisted across the full 10-week period of the experiment.

Why It Matters

This could be useful for reassuring and empowering marginalized voices who would otherwise be silenced by hostility. It may also help with polarization, as it helps newcomers and outsiders to an online community more accurately gauge hostile users as being the minority that they are, rather than seeing them as representative of the entire community and treating that community accordingly.

Special Considerations

Examples

This intervention entry currently lacks photographic evidence (screencaps, &c.)

Citations

Reducing the Silencing Role of Harassment in Online Feminism Discussions

J. Nathan Matias, Tyler Simko and Marianne Reddan
June 10, 2020
DOI:

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Further reading

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