"There's so much responsibility on users right now:" Expert Advice for Staying Safer From Hate and Harassment

TL;DR

This study interviews 24 experts to identify key threats and effective advice for online safety against hate and harassment, highlighting areas of consensus and disagreement to inform better protective strategies.

Contribution

It provides a nuanced analysis of expert opinions on online safety advice, revealing conflicting perspectives and consolidating consensus on primary threats and protective measures.

Findings

Experts identified primary threats of hate and harassment online.

There is significant disagreement on which safety advice is most effective.

Consensus exists on certain key safety strategies.

Abstract

Online hate and harassment poses a threat to the digital safety of people globally. In light of this risk, there is a need to equip as many people as possible with advice to stay safer online. We interviewed 24 experts to understand what threats and advice internet users should prioritize to prevent or mitigate harm. As part of this, we asked experts to evaluate 45 pieces of existing hate-and-harassment-specific digital-safety advice to understand why they felt advice was viable or not. We find that experts frequently had competing perspectives for which threats and advice they would prioritize. We synthesize sources of disagreement, while also highlighting the primary threats and advice where experts concurred. Our results inform immediate efforts to protect users from online hate and harassment, as well as more expansive socio-technical efforts to establish enduring safety.