The Online Identity Help Center: Designing and Developing a Content Moderation Policy Resource for Marginalized Social Media Users

Abstract

Marginalized social media users struggle to navigate inequitable content moderation they experience online. We developed the Online Identity Help Center (OIHC) to confront this challenge by providing information on social media users' rights, summarizing platforms' policies, and providing instructions to appeal moderation decisions. We discuss our findings from interviews (n = 24) and surveys (n = 75) which informed the OIHC's design, along with interviews about and usability tests of the site (n = 12). We found that the OIHC's resources made it easier for participants to understand platforms' policies and access appeal resources. Participants expressed increased willingness to read platforms' policies after reading the OIHC's summarized versions, but expressed mistrust of platforms after reading them. We discuss the study's implications, such as the benefits of providing summarized policies to encourage digital literacy, and how doing so may enable users to express skepticism of platforms' policies after reading them.