Online social media platforms use automated moderation systems to remove or reduce the visibility of rule-breaking content. While previous work has documented the importance of manual content moderation, the effects of automated content moderation remain largely unknown. Here, in a large study of Facebook comments (n=412M), we used a fuzzy regression discontinuity design to measure the impact of automated content moderation on subsequent rule-breaking behavior (number of comments hidden/deleted) and engagement (number of additional comments posted). We found that comment deletion decreased subsequent rule-breaking behavior in shorter threads (20 or fewer comments), even among other participants, suggesting that the intervention prevented conversations from derailing. Further, the effect of deletion on the affected user's subsequent rule-breaking behavior was longer-lived than its effect on reducing commenting in general, suggesting that users were deterred from rule-breaking but not from commenting. In contrast, hiding (rather than deleting) content had small and statistically insignificant effects. Our results suggest that automated content moderation increases adherence to community guidelines.

翻译：在线社交媒体平台采用自动化审核系统，以移除或降低违规内容的可见性。尽管先前研究已证实人工内容审核的重要性，但自动化内容审核的效果在很大程度上仍属未知。本研究基于Facebook评论的大规模数据分析（n=412M），采用模糊断点回归设计，评估了自动化内容审核对后续违规行为（被隐藏/删除的评论数量）及用户参与度（新增评论数量）的影响。研究发现，评论删除行为在较短讨论串（20条评论以内）中减少了后续违规行为，即使对其他参与者也是如此，这表明该干预措施阻止了对话偏离正轨。此外，删除对被影响用户后续违规行为的影响比其对整体评论减少的影响更为持久，说明用户被震慑而不再违规，但并未停止评论。相比之下，隐藏（而非删除）内容的影响较小且统计上不显著。研究结果表明，自动化内容审核有助于提高社区指南的遵守程度。