Adapting to Automated Governance: Unpacking User Perceptions of Bot Moderation in Telegram and Discord Chats
Andy Zhao, Lancaster Wu, Chia‐Yen Hsieh, Mor Naaman · 2024
Private communications on messaging platforms pose unique challenges for moderation works compared to more public-facing social media platforms.To address this challenge, some platforms have integrated moderation bots which can play an important role in keeping these spaces usable and safe. We study perceptions of bot moderation on Telegram and Discord with 21 in-depth interviews with users exposed to these bots in group chats.Our results suggest a broad acceptance of automated bot moderation, largely due to bots' convenience, consistency, and neutrality.Moderation bots were perceived as social actors and fostered a delegated governance model on messaging platforms, which further influenced how users perceived bot interventions in private conversations.Still, interviews show bots' challenges in accommodating contextual nuances, leaving human interventions essential.Finally, interviewees reflected on opportunities for developing moderation bots with generative AI, which we include in our implications for the design of future moderation bots for messaging platforms.