Critical Challenges in Content Moderation for People Who Use Drugs (PWUD): Insights into Online Harm Reduction Practices from Moderators

TL;DR

This paper explores the unique challenges faced by moderators of online PWUD communities, highlighting the need for sociotechnical system redesigns to better support health-related moderation within legal and platform constraints.

Contribution

It identifies three core challenges in content moderation for PWUD communities and proposes design shifts from binary to multi-dimensional approaches and high-level instructions.

Findings

Moderators face high-stakes risk evaluation requiring pharmacological expertise.

Platform policies often conflict with harm reduction goals.

Design recommendations include multi-dimensional moderation and high-level instructional systems.

Abstract

Online communities serve as essential support channels for People Who Use Drugs (PWUD), providing access to peer support and harm reduction information. The moderation of these communities involves consequential decisions affecting member safety, yet existing sociotechnical systems provide insufficient support for moderators. Through interviews with experienced moderators from PWUD forums on Reddit, we examine the unique nature of this work and its implications for HCI and content moderation research. We demonstrate that this work constitutes a distinct form of public health intervention characterised by three challenges: (1) high-stakes risk evaluation requiring pharmacological expertise, (2) time-critical crisis intervention spanning platform content and external drug market surveillance, and (3) navigation of structural conflicts where platform policies designed to minimise legal liability directly oppose community harm reduction goals. Our findings extend existing HCI moderation frameworks by revealing how legal liability structures can systematically undermine expert moderators' protective work, with implications for other marginalised communities facing similar regulatory tensions, including abortion care and sex work contexts. We identify two necessary shifts in sociotechnical design: moving from binary classification to multi-dimensional approaches that externalise competing factors moderators must balance, and shifting from low-level rule programming to high-level example-based instruction. However, we surface unresolved tensions around volunteer labour sustainability and risks of incorporating automated systems in high-stakes health contexts, identifying open questions requiring HCI research attention. These findings inform the design of platforms that better accommodate vulnerable populations whose health needs conflict with regulatory frameworks.