A feast for trolls -- Engagement analysis of counternarratives against online toxicity

TL;DR

This study analyzes how different counternarratives, including memes and AI-generated content, engage users in responding to over 15 million toxic social media messages, providing insights into online hate mitigation.

Contribution

It offers a large-scale engagement analysis of counternarratives against online toxicity, combining multilingual detection and real-life user responses.

Findings

Counternarratives can effectively engage users in online toxicity mitigation.

Visual memes and AI-generated texts are commonly used in responses.

The study provides insights into self-regulatory approaches for online hate.

Abstract

This report provides an engagement analysis of counternarratives against online toxicity. Between February 2020 and July 2021, we observed over 15 million toxic messages on social media identified by our fine-grained, multilingual detection AI. Over 1,000 dashboard users responded to toxic messages with combinations of visual memes, text, or AI-generated text, or they reported content. This leads to new, real-life insights on self-regulatory approaches for the mitigation of online hate.