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This article reports on a thematic content analysis of 486 newsroom posts published between 2016 and 2021 by five prominent digital platforms (Facebook, Tinder, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter). We aimed to understand how these platforms frame and define the issues of harm and safety, and to identify the interventions they publicly report introducing to address these issues. We found that platforms respond to and draw upon external controversies and media panics to selectively construct matters of concern related to safety and harm. They then reactively propose solutions that serve as justification for further investment in and scaling up of automated, data-intensive surveillance and verification technologies. We examine four key themes in the data: locating harm with bad actors and discrete content objects (Theme 1), framing surveillance and policing as solutions to harm (Theme 2), policing “borderline” content through suppression strategies (Theme 3), and performing diversity and inclusion (Theme 4).

Online harassment refers to a wide range of harmful behaviors, including hate speech, insults, doxxing, and non-consensual image sharing. Social media platforms have developed complex processes to try to detect and manage content that may violate community guidelines; however, less work has examined the types of harms associated with online harassment or preferred remedies to that harassment. We conducted three online surveys with US adult Internet users measuring perceived harms and preferred remedies associated with online harassment. Study 1 found greater perceived harm associated with non-consensual photo sharing, doxxing, and reputational damage compared to other types of harassment. Study 2 found greater perceived harm with repeated harassment compared to one-time harassment, but no difference between individual and group harassment. Study 3 found variance in remedy preferences by harassment type; for example, banning users is rated highly in general, but is rated lower for non-consensual photo sharing and doxxing compared to harassing family and friends and damaging reputation. Our findings highlight that remedies should be responsive to harassment type and potential for harm. Remedies are also not necessarily correlated with harassment severity—expanding remedies may allow for more contextually appropriate and effective responses to harassment.

Incels (involuntary celibates), a subgroup of the so called ‘manosphere,’ have become an increasing security concern for policymakers, researchers, and practitioners following their association with several violent attacks. Once mostly contained on niche men’s forums, redpilled and blackpilled communities and theories are gaining prominence on mainstream social media platforms. However, whilst previous research considerably enhanced our understanding of the incel phenomenon and their presence on Reddit and secluded incel forums, incel’s presence on mainstream social media platforms is understudied and their presence on TikTok is yet to be addressed. The present paper examines the incel subculture on TikTok, through an analysis of incel accounts, videos and their respective comments, to understand the role mainstream social media platforms play in the ‘normiefication’ and normalisation of incel ideology and discourse. The findings suggest that on TikTok the expression of incel ideology takes a covert form, employing emotional appeals and pseudo-science to disseminate common incelosphere tropes. Further, we demonstrate how the process of mainstreaming incel beliefs is facilitated by their interconnectedness with wider sexism and structural misogyny. The harms generating from this association are conducive to the normalisation of blackpill beliefs and the reinforcement of misogyny, sexism and justification of rape culture.

Violence is an almost ubiquitous phenomenon in contemporary digital environments. In this context, there is a growing need to understand how violence is enacted and represented on social media. Drawing from a case study where Colombian young adults discussed the violence they interacted with on their everyday uses of digital platforms, this article explores how violence on social media is experienced and understood by users. Findings emphasize the need to look at violence on digital platforms as a multifaceted, fluid, overlapping, and interconnected phenomenon. In light of these results, I suggest framing current harmful practices as ecologies of violence. To better explore these ecologies, I outline three specific areas that highlight how violence is transformed on social media: practices, contexts, and grammars. Overall, this study emphasizes the need to recognize and address the complexity of violence in social media—a necessary step toward building cultures of peace in and outside of our digital environments.

User-facing ‘platform safety technology’ encompasses an array of tools offered by social media platforms to help people protect themselves from harm, for example allowing people to report content or block other users. These tools are an increasingly important part of online safety; however, little is known about how users engage with them. We present findings from a nationally representative survey of UK adults examining their experiences with online harms and safety technologies. The results show that online harm is widespread: 67% of respondents report having encountered harmful content online. Among those who are aware of safety tools, over 80% have used at least one, indicating high uptake when knowledge of the tools is present. Awareness of specific tools is varied, with people more aware of ‘post hoc’ safety tools, taken in response to harm exposure (such as reporting or blocking), than preventive measures (such as altering feed algorithms). However, satisfaction with safety technologies is generally low. People who have previously seen online harms are more likely to use safety tools, implying a ‘learning the hard way’ route to engagement. Those higher in digital literacy are also more likely to use some of these tools, raising concerns about the accessibility of these technologies. In addition, women are more likely to engage in particular types of online ‘safety work’. These findings have significant implications for platform designers, regulators, researchers and policymakers seeking to create a safer and more equitable online environment.

Cyberbullying has emerged as a societal issue, and the majority of the research examining cyberbullying perpetration samples adolescent and/or emerging adult populations. A paucity of empirical attention has focused on young children (aged 8–10) regarding their cyberbullying frequency and predictors. The current study sampled 142 US youth aged 8–10 years and assessed their cyberbullying perpetration rate and cellular phone ownership. Results indicated that (a) older participants were more likely to cyberbully than their younger peers; (b) higher rates of cyberbullying were found for youth who already owned a cellular phone; and (c) an interaction between participant age and cellular phone ownership was found, suggesting that cyberbullying was highest for only the 10-year-old group who owned a cellular phone. These findings have implications for (a) parents, school administrators, health care providers, and anyone else interested in better understanding the predictors of cyberbullying perpetration; (b) intervention specialists focused on reducing cyberbullying in youth; and (c) a researcher interested in understanding the basic theoretical underpinnings of cyberbullying. Based on these findings, we recommend that (a) cyberbullying interventions be administered to youth as early as elementary school; (b) parents/guardians carefully consider the positive and negative consequences of youth cellular phone usage; and (c) increased communication between youth and parents/guardians concerning youth cellular phone activities.

The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) marks the biggest shake up to the rules for online intermediary liability in twenty years. The DSA is accompanied by flanking instruments regulating terrorist content, child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and political ads which, together, will create an entirely new framework for the regulation of online harms in the EU. These new and wide-ranging obligations attempt to reconcile the damage caused by unregulated user-generated content, fundamental rights to freedom of information and the practical limitations of moderating content at scale. The DSA is likely to shape the global approach to content regulation in this emerging area of law. Digital Services Act, DSA, Online Harm, Intermediary Liability, Intermediary Services, Hosting Services, Very Large Online Search Engines, Online Platforms, Very Large Online Platforms

Humor and play are at the center of TikTok culture. Through the platform’s unique functionalities such as the “Use this Sound” and “Duet” features, people use and repurpose sounds in combination with dance and other performative “challenges” that invite imitation and transformation in novel and creative ways. Users have found on TikTok an ideal site to engage in memetic culture for a wide variety of prosocial aims: from calling out China’s treatment of Uighurs to “memeing” politicians for their poor commitments to matters of concern like climate change. All too often, though, users on TikTok also participate in practices that can advertently and inadvertently be harmful, such as viral trends trivializing police brutality and domestic violence and racist parodies. In a moment where various countries are discussing new regulations to push platforms to address, consistently and transparently, illegal and lawful harmful content and conduct, this commentary argues that humor should be taken seriously for online safety.

During times of crisis such as the Covid-19 pandemic, digital platforms are under public scrutiny to guarantee users’ online safety and wellbeing. Following inconsistencies in how platforms moderate online content and behavior, governments around the world are putting pressure on them to curb the spread of illegal and lawful harmful content and behavior (e.g., UK’s Draft Online Safety Bill). These efforts, though, mainly focus on overt abuse and false information, which misses more mundane social media practices such as racial stereotyping that are equally popular and can be inadvertently harmful. Building on Stoever’s (2016) work on the “sonic color line,” this article problematizes sound, specifically, as a key element in racializing memetic practices on the popular short-video platform TikTok. We examine how humorous audio-visual memes about Covid-19 on TikTok contribute to social inequality by normalizing racial stereotyping, as facilitated through TikTok’s “Use This Sound” feature. We found that users’ appropriations of sounds and visuals on TikTok, in combination with the platform’s lack of clear and transparent moderation processes for humorous content, reinforce and (re)produce systems of advantage based on race. Our article contributes to remediating the consistent downplaying of humor that negatively stereotypes historically marginalized communities. It also advances work on race and racism on social media by foregrounding the sonification of race as means for racism’s evolving persistence, which represents a threat to social cohesion.