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The Unappreciated Role of Intent in Algorithmic Moderation of Social Media Content

2024/05/17 by Xinyu Wang, Wang, Xinyu, Sai Koneru +7
Computer Science · #Computation and Language (cs.CL) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2405.11030

openalex publication_date 2024/05/17 · openalex created_date 2024/05/22 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

As social media has become a predominant mode of communication globally, the rise of abusive content threatens to undermine civil discourse. Recognizing the critical nature of this issue, a significant body of research has been dedicated to developing language models that can detect various types of online abuse, e.g., hate speech, cyberbullying. However, there exists a notable disconnect between platform policies, which often consider the author's intention as a criterion for content moderation, and the current capabilities of detection models, which typically lack efforts to capture intent. This paper examines the role of intent in content moderation systems. We review state of the art detection models and benchmark training datasets for online abuse to assess their awareness and ability to capture intent. We propose strategic changes to the design and development of automated detection and moderation systems to improve alignment with ethical and policy conceptualizations of abuse.

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