"I have never seen that for Deaf people's content: " Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing User Experiences with Misinformation, Moderation, and Debunking on Social Media in the US

Misinformation has been studied with various social media user groups, though not with Deaf and Hard-of-hearing (DHH) individuals. To address this gap, we conducted an interview with 15 DHH participants to explore their lived experiences with misinformation and their perspectives on common moderation and debunking approaches on social media. We found that participants often experience falsehoods, and highlighted examples specific to the DHH community such as misinformation related to American Sign Language (ASL) and Deaf culture. However, moderation interventions and debunking strategies for misinformation specific to DHH topics were lacking. Written warnings may be beneficial as long as they use language appropriate for DHH people with diverse literacy skills. Participants found visual interventions (e.g., videos) more beneficial as long as they can be appropriately captioned – which is not always the case in practice. Our findings provide practical moderation insights for DHH social media users.