We consider the problem of how a platform designer, owner, or operator can improve the design and operation of a digital platform by leveraging a computational cognitive model that represents users's folk theories about a platform as a sociotechnical system. We do so in the context of Reddit, a social media platform whose owners and administrators make extensive use of shadowbanning, a non-transparent content moderation mechanism that filters a user's posts and comments so that they cannot be seen by fellow community members or the public. After demonstrating that the design and operation of Reddit have led to an abundance of spurious suspicions of shadowbanning in case the mechanism was not in fact invoked, we develop a computational cognitive model of users's folk theories about the antecedents and consequences of shadowbanning that predicts when users will attribute their on-platform observations to a shadowban. The model is then used to evaluate the capacity of interventions available to a platform designer, owner, and operator to reduce the incidence of these false suspicions. We conclude by considering the implications of this approach for the design and operation of digital platforms at large.

翻译：我们研究了平台设计者、所有者或运营者如何通过构建代表用户关于平台作为社会技术系统的民间理论的计算认知模型，来改进数字平台的设计与运营问题。本文以Reddit社交媒体平台为研究场景——该平台的管理者与运营者广泛采用"影子封禁"机制，即一种非透明的内容审核机制，通过过滤用户的帖子和评论使其无法被社区成员或公众查看。在证明Reddit的设计与运营已导致大量虚假怀疑（用户误判自身遭遇影子封禁）后，我们构建了一个关于用户对影子封禁前因后果认知的计算认知模型，该模型能够预测用户何时会将其在平台上的观测结果归因于影子封禁。随后，该模型被用于评估平台设计者、所有者与运营者可用的干预措施在减少此类虚假怀疑方面的有效性。最后，我们探讨了这种方法对数字平台整体设计与运营的启示意义。