Investigating Moderation Challenges to Combating Hate and Harassment: The Case of Mod-Admin Power Dynamics and Feature Misuse on Reddit

Social media platforms often rely on volunteer moderators to combat hate and harassment and create safe online environments. In the face of challenges combating hate and harassment, moderators engage in mutual support with one another. We conducted a qualitative content analysis of 115 hate and harassment-related threads from r/ModSupport and r/modhelp, two major subreddit forums for this type of mutual support. We analyze the challenges moderators face; complex tradeoffs related to privacy, utility, and harassment; and major challenges in the relationship between moderators and platform admins. We also present the first systematization of how platform features (including especially security, privacy, and safety features) are misused for online abuse, and drawing on this systematization we articulate design themes for platforms that want to resist such misuse.