Teen Vigilance: Navigating Risky Social Interactions on DiscordTeenagers are avid users of Discord, a fast-growing platform for synchronous communication where they often interact with strangers. Because Discord combines private DMs, semi-private voice channels, and public servers in one place, it creates a hybrid environment that can produce complex—and underexplored—safety risks for teenagers. Drawing on 16 interviews with teenage Discord users, this study examines their strategies for navigating risky social interactions in the platform. Our findings reveal that when teenagers encounter risks during social interactions, they exercise vigilance by evaluating suspicious interactions before forming friendships, using safety tools, and engaging in controlled risk-taking to safeguard their privacy and security. At the community level, they mitigate risks through selective participation in servers, a practice supported by vigilant governance structures. We discuss how vigilance enables teenagers to act during risky encounters to protect themselves, advancing understanding of teenagers’ agency in risk navigation and informing teen-centered designs for safer online environments.2026EKElena Koung et al.The Pennsylvania State UniversityYouth Online Safety & PrivacyOnline Harassment & Counter-ToolsSocial Platform Design & User BehaviorCHI
Surveillance as Care: Configuring Baby Monitors in the HomeWith the development of consumer surveillance technologies, monitoring has become increasingly accessible and woven into family life. Prior work has examined parents’ attitudes, privacy concerns, and selected uses of surveillance technologies like smart cameras and location-tracking apps, but offers limited accounts of how parents, as surveillants, configure and experience these technologies themselves in daily parenting. We address this gap by focusing on baby monitoring technologies (BMTs) as a high-salience context during a sensitive stage of family life. Using inductive thematic analysis of Reddit discussions, we examine how parents engage with BMTs in practice. Our findings revealed how parents actively assemble and configure BMTs, navigate and manage their emotions through them, negotiate privacy frictions and boundaries, and safeguard security in their use of such technologies within parenting and caregiving. We conclude by discussing implications for surveillance research and design for monitoring technologies in care.2026QSQiurong Song et al.The Pennsylvania State UniversitySmart Home Privacy & SecurityYouth Online Safety & PrivacyDigital Parenting & Screen Time ManagementCHI
Why Creators Break Rules: Quantitative Evidence on Moral Disengagement and Self-ControlSocial video platforms such as YouTube and Twitch increasingly moderate noncompliant video content, yet we know little about what psychological factors drive creators to produce such videos. Drawing on theories of self-control and moral disengagement, we examine how self-control and moral disengagement influence creators' production of noncompliant videos, their moderation experience, and, once moderated, their perceived fairness of moderation decisions and their coping strategies. By analyzing data from a survey with 400 video creators, we find that moral disengagement increases the creation of noncompliant videos and moderation experience, while self-control reduces them. Self-control and moral disengagement influence creators’ adoption of coping strategies in response to moderation decisions, but in distinct ways. The effects of moral disengagement and self-control are moderated by creators' reliance on video creation for income. These findings offer a fuller account of why creators offend. We discuss implications for better supporting punished creators’ behavioral improvement.2026YLYao Li et al.University of Central FloridaSocial Platform Design & User BehaviorContent Moderation & Platform GovernanceCyberbullying & Online HarassmentCHI
Player Safety by Design: Co-Designing Child-Centered Safety Mechanisms with ChildrenGaming is a meaningful part of children’s lives, yet its safety has drawn increasing concerns from scholars and the public. On platforms like Roblox, children may encounter extremist roleplay, scams, or virtual rape. Prior research has emphasized technical interventions that address risks after they occur and ethical frameworks for game design, but children’s perspectives on safety design remain missing. To address this gap, we conducted a cooperative inquiry study to co-design safety mechanisms with 22 children aged 7–12. Children proposed designs emphasizing transparent information about games and purchases, community accountability through reporting and reviews, player empowerment to manage social boundaries and engagement, and age-appropriate game navigation. Our findings extend safety-by-design research by foregrounding children’s perspectives, showing how they envision safety mechanisms across both game and platform design, while enjoying safe play through risk exposure, allocating trust, and balancing platform support with agency.2026ZZZinan Zhang et al.The Pennsylvania State UniversityGame AccessibilityChild-Computer Interaction DesignYouth Online Safety & PrivacyCHI
"The System is Made to Inherently Push Child Gambling in my Opinion": Child Safety, Monetization, and Moderation on RobloxUser-generated game (UGG) platforms like Roblox are enormously popular among children but are increasingly scrutinized for safety risks, such as gambling-like gameplay features and disturbing game themes such as slavery and Nazi roleplay. Researchers have started to examine harms in UGGs, but little attention has been paid to how game creators themselves consider child safety in their game making practices. To answer this question, we conducted an interview study with 20 Roblox creators with varied degrees of success. We found that our interviewees observed several types of risks to child players’ safety in their games, such as child-specific deceptive design, gambling-like gameplay, sexual abuse, and scamming. They further reasoned about major causes of these safety risks, such as Roblox’s profit-driven monetization model, and leaving the burden of moderation to individual game creators. We discuss implications for platform governance on UGG platforms as well as policymaking.2025YKYubo Kou et al.The Pennsylvania State University, College of Information Sciences and TechnologySocial Platform Design & User BehaviorContent Moderation & Platform GovernanceCHI
Weighing Benefits and Harms: Parental Mediation on Social Video PlatformsChildren's increasing use of social video platforms like YouTube and TikTok raises safety concerns for parents, yet little research explores how they mediate their children's social video consumption. Previous studies often treat online harms and benefits as outcomes of parental mediation, overlooking how these factors affect parental mediation or how these effects vary with parents’ self-efficacy. To address these gaps, we surveyed 285 parents and found that perceived content informativeness value and content-inherent harm increase mediation, while entertainment value and creator trustworthiness decrease it. Parents’ self-efficacy—digital literacy and confidence in understanding their children's consumption—and children's consumption frequency significantly moderate these effects. These findings lead us to discuss how parental mediation differs between traditional media and social video platforms, where parents perform a more complex benefit-harm analysis due to competing effects of perceived harms and benefits. We propose strategies for enhancing parents’ self-efficacy and platform-parent collaboration in children's online safety.2025RMRenkai Ma et al.Pennsylvania State University, College of Information Sciences and TechnologySocial Platform Design & User BehaviorCHI
Understanding Users' Perception of Personally Identifiable InformationPersonally identifiable information (PII) is a fundamental concept in privacy research and regulations. Understanding users' perspectives on PII is critical, as their understanding of PII can significantly affect their privacy decisions and practices. While much research has explored users’ privacy perceptions and disclosure preferences regarding PII, less attention has been focused on how users internally define and conceptualize PII. In this study, we conducted interviews with 32 participants to investigate their conceptualization and understanding of PII, using period and fertility tracking apps as the context. Our findings reveal how users perceive the processes and contexts through which personal information, by becoming identifiable, transitions into PII, as well as concerns about data sharing and misuse in these apps. We conclude by advocating for addressing the misalignment between users' perceptions of PII and the regulatory protections and privacy designs surrounding it.2025QSQiurong Song et al.The Pennsylvania State University, College of Information Sciences and TechnologyPrivacy by Design & User ControlPrivacy Perception & Decision-MakingCHI
Collective Privacy Sensemaking on Social Media about Period and Fertility Tracking post Roe v. WadeOn June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, which has led to full bans on most abortions in 14 states within one year. Many people in the U.S. use period and fertility tracking apps for reproductive healthcare and concerns have arisen about the privacy risks these apps might pose in the wake of Roe reversal. Existing literature on privacy risks of period and fertility tracking apps has primarily examined the privacy policies and practices of these apps. However, how users make sense of the privacy risks of these apps, especially in the post-Roe time, remains understudied. This study explores collective privacy sensemaking on social media, a practice in which people collectively make sense of a privacy situation. Our findings reveal how people contextualize privacy issues, speculate about the associated risks, as well as explore risk mitigation strategies. We conclude with privacy design implications for privacy design in period and fertility tracking apps and contribute insights that could inform policymaking and legal perspectives.2024QSQiurong Song et al.Session 4c: Data Donation, Privacy and SecurityCSCW
Casual Competition by Design: A Study of the All Random All Mid (ARAM) Mode in League of LegendsCompetitive gaming, a long-standing study context for CSCW, has recently faced criticism due to its design emphasis on competition and achievement, which is associated with adverse phenomena such as player toxicity and anxiety. Recognizing this limit, game designers have proactively made design attempts to ameliorate these unintended consequences of competitive gaming. A notable example is the All Random All Mid (ARAM) mode in League of Legends (LoL), designed to introduce casualness into competitive gaming. To understand how players experience both casualness and competitiveness, a seemingly contradictory pair, we conducted an interview study with ARAM players, finding that ARAM supports ‘casual competition’ through decentering competition, diversifying interpersonal dynamics, and filling gaps in player needs. We further discuss how game design and player agency co-constitute casual competition, reflect on key aspects of competitive gaming design such as diversity and fairness, and provide implications for competitive gaming design, which may help combat toxicity.2024ZZZinan Zhang et al.Session 4f: Multiplayer Gaming and CommunicationCSCW
Labeling in the Dark: Exploring Content Creators’ and Consumers’ Experiences with Content Classification for Child Safety on YouTubeProtecting children’s online privacy is paramount. Online platforms seek to enhance child privacy protection by implementing new classification systems into their content moderation practices. One prominent example is YouTube’s “made for kids” (MFK) classification. However, traditional content moderation focuses on managing content rather than users’ privacy; little is known about how users experience these classification systems. Thematically analyzing online discussions about YouTube’s MFK classification system, we present a case study on content creators’ and consumers’ experiences. We found that creators and consumers perceived MFK classification as misaligned with their actual practices, creators encountered unexpected consequences of practicing labeling, and creators and consumers identified MFK classification’s intersections with other platform designs. Our findings shed light on an interwoven network of multiple classification systems that extends the original focus on child privacy to encompass broader child safety issues; these insights contribute to the design principles of child-centered safety within this intricate network.2024RMRenkai Ma et al.Teleoperated DrivingUniversal & Inclusive DesignContent Moderation & Platform GovernanceDIS
The Ecology of Harmful Design: Risk and Safety of Game Making on a Metaverse Platform Metaverse platforms have been on the rise in recent years, offering three-dimensional (3D), immersive virtual worlds while encouraging user-generated content (UGC) in various forms. Roblox, a popular metaverse platform, enables its users to create a holistic virtual world (i.e., develop a 3D game) for other users to interact with. However, complex UGC is also challenging to moderate. Roblox has been notorious for its users’ harmful designs, such as Nazi or terrorist role-playing mechanisms. In this study, we explore how harmful design takes place on Roblox. Through a grounded theory analysis of the ‘r/Robloxgamedev’ subreddit, we conceptualize an ecological view of harmful design, foregrounding three interconnected circumstances, namely sociotechnical risks, socioeconomic precarities, and normative (in)sensitivities, which work together to condition and give rise to harmful designs and bring about unique governance challenges to metaverse platforms. We conclude by laying out implications for design moderation.2024YKYubo Kou et al.Content Moderation & Platform GovernanceOnline Identity & Self-PresentationGender & Race Issues in HCIDIS
"At the end of the day, I am accountable": Gig Workers' Self-Tracking for Multi-Dimensional Accountability ManagementTracking is inherent in and central to the gig economy. Platforms track gig workers' performance through metrics such as acceptance rate and punctuality, while gig workers themselves engage in self-tracking. Although prior research has extensively examined how gig platforms track workers through metrics – with some studies briefly acknowledging the phenomenon of self-tracking among workers – there is a dearth of studies that explore how and why gig workers track themselves. To address this, we conducted 25 semi-structured interviews, revealing how gig workers self-track to manage accountabilities to themselves and external entities across three identities: the holistic self, the entrepreneurial self, and the platformized self. We connect our findings to neoliberalism, through which we contextualize gig workers' self-accountability and the invisible labor of self-tracking. We further discuss how self-tracking mitigates information and power asymmetries in gig work and offer design implications to support gig workers’ multi-dimensional self-tracking.2024RHRie Helene (Lindy) Hernandez et al.The Pennsylvania State UniversityNotification & Interruption ManagementImpact of Automation on WorkCHI
Trading as Gambling: Social Investing and Financial Risks on the r/WallStreetBets subredditFinancial trading has become commonplace, involving the purchase and sale of securities such as stocks and bonds. While HCI research has investigated people’s financial literacy and decision-making and how to design for it, little is known as to how people form financial conversations on social media. To answer this question, we used a grounded theory approach to analyzing financial conversations in the YOLO (‘you only live once’) posts on the r/WallStreetBets subreddit (WSB), one of today’s largest financial online communities. We describe how WSB's discursive culture portrays its gambling-like, high-risk trading by likening trading to gambling, celebrating it, and normalizing financial risk-taking. We discuss the rise of social investing, including how individual investors’ affective relationships encourage their outsized risk-taking, as well as reflect on its looming financial risks, especially to already marginalized groups. Lastly, we propose implications for design and policymaking.2024YKYubo Kou et al.Pennsylvania State UniversityPrivacy by Design & User ControlSocial Platform Design & User BehaviorCHI
“Our Users' Privacy is Paramount to Us”: A Discourse Analysis of How Period and Fertility Tracking App Companies Address the Roe v Wade OverturnAfter the overturn of Roe v. Wade gave states the license to ban abortion, numerous people in US have grown to worry about privacy in using period and fertility tracking apps. To address these concerns, some app companies have issued public statements to engage in privacy communication with their users. Prior literature has investigated period and fertility tracking apps’ data practices in their privacy policies. However, there remains a dearth of knowledge regarding how companies use privacy communication to address historic privacy-related events such as the overturn. To address the gap, this study investigated app companies’ public statements addressing the overturn of Roe using a combined approach of thematic and discourse analysis. Our findings revealed that companies strategically emphasize their commitment to privacy by demonstrating how their business practices and values are closely intertwined with their efforts to protect user data. We conclude by discussing translatable implications for privacy research.2024QSQiurong Song et al.The Pennsylvania State UniversityPrivacy by Design & User ControlPrivacy Perception & Decision-MakingCHI
Community Begins Where Moderation Ends: Peer Support and Its Implications for Community-Based RehabilitationModeration systems of online games often follow a retributive model inspired by real-world criminal justice, expecting that punishments can help users to reform behavior. However, decades of criminological research show that punishments alone do not work and call for a rehabilitative approach, such as community-based rehabilitation (CBR), to help offenders transform their minds and behavioral patterns. Motivated by this call, we explore how moderated users view punishments in a community context and how other community members respond in League of Legends (LoL), one of the largest online games. Specifically, we focus on how peer support is sought and provided on the /r/LeagueOfLegends subreddit, the largest LoL-related online community. Our content analysis of player discussions characterized the communication between moderated users and peers as informative, constructive, and reflexive. We highlight the importance of involving community in moderation systems and discuss implications for designing CBR mechanisms that could enhance moderation systems.2024YKYubo Kou et al.Pennsylvania State UniversityOnline Harassment & Counter-ToolsSocial Platform Design & User BehaviorCHI
How Users Experience Moderation?: A Systematic Literature ReviewResearchers across various fields have investigated how users experience moderation with different perspectives and methodologies. At present, there is a pressing need to synthesize and extract key insights from prior literature in order to formulate a systematic understanding of what constitutes a moderation experience and to explore how such understanding could further moderation-related research and practice. To answer this question, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to identify and analyze 42 empirical articles published between January 2016 and March 2022. We describe these studies’ characteristics, characterize user experiences with moderation systems, and identify primary perspectives to conceptualize moderation experience. These findings suggest an expansive scope of research interests in understanding moderation experiences and considering moderated users as an important stakeholder group to reflect on current moderation design but also pertain to the dominance of the punitive, solutionist logic in moderation and ample implications for future moderation research, design, and practice.2023RMRenkai Ma et al.Moderation ICSCW
“Defaulting to boilerplate answers, they didn’t engage in a genuine conversation”: Dimensions of Transparency Design in Creator ModerationTransparency matters a lot to people who experience moderation on online platforms; much CSCW research has viewed offering explanations as one of the primary solutions to enhance moderation transparency. However, relatively little attention has been paid to unpacking what transparency entails in moderation design, especially for content creators. We interviewed 28 YouTubers to understand their moderation experiences and analyze dimensions of moderation transparency. We identified four primary dimensions: participants desired the moderation system to present moderation punishments saliently, explain punishments profoundly, afford communication with them effectively, and offer repairment and learning opportunities. We discuss how these four dimensions are mutually constitutive and conditioned in the context of creator moderation, where the target of governance mechanisms extends beyond the content to include the creator. We then elaborate on how a dynamic, transparency perspective could value content creators’ digital labor, how transparency design could support creators’ learning, as well as implications for transparency design of other creator platforms.2023RMRenkai Ma et al.Moderation IIICSCW
Harmful Design in the Metaverse and How to Mitigate it: A Case Study of User-Generated Virtual Worlds on RobloxMetaverse platforms such as Roblox have become increasingly popular and profitable through a business model that relies on their end users to create and interact with user-generated virtual worlds (UGVWs). However, UGVWs are difficult to moderate, because game design is inherently more complex than static content such as text and images; and Roblox, a game platform targeted primarily at child players, is notorious for harmful user-generated game such as Nazi roleplay games and gambling-like mechanisms. To develop a better understanding of how harmful design is embedded in UGVWs, we conducted an empirical study to understand Roblox users’ experiences with harmful design. We identified several primary ways in which user-generated game designs can be harmful, ranging from directly injecting inappropriate content into the virtual environment of UGVWs to embedding problematic incentive mechanisms into the UGVWs. We further discuss opportunities and challenges for mitigating harmful designs.2023YKYubo Kou et al.Social Platform Design & User BehaviorContent Moderation & Platform GovernanceCyberbullying & Online HarassmentDIS
Transparency, Fairness, and Coping: How Players Experience Moderation in Multiplayer Online GamesMultiplayer online games seek to address toxic behaviors such as trolling and griefing through behavior moderation, where penalties such as chat restriction or account suspension are issued against toxic players in the hope that punishments create a teachable moment for punished players to reflect and improve future behavior. While punishments impact player experience (PX) in profound ways, little is known regarding how players experience behavior moderation. In this study, we conducted a survey of 291 players to understand their experiences with punishments in online multiplayer games. Through several statistical analyses, we found that moderation explanation plays a critical role in improving players’ perceived transparency and fairness of moderation; and these perceptions significantly affect what players do after punishments. We discuss moderation experience as an important facet of PX, bridge the game and moderation literature, and provide design implications for behavior moderation in multiplayer online games.2023RMRenkai Ma et al.Pennsylvania State UniversityGame UX & Player BehaviorMultiplayer & Social GamesCHI
Multi-Platform Content Creation: The Configuration of Creator Ecology through Platform Prioritization, Content Synchronization, and Audience ManagementOnline platforms like YouTube and Instagram have enabled the platformization and monetization of creative work, allowing content creators to derive revenue and thrive in a creator economy. While much work has been done to understand content creation on single platforms, the creative practice often involves content creators’ agency and practice to interact with multiple platforms and make strategic decisions to optimize such interactions. In this paper, we use an interview study with 21 cross-platform creators to understand how they negotiate with platforms in their creative practices through the construction of creator ecology. We found that participants developed priorities among platforms based on varied criteria, paid attention to cross-platform content synchronization, and stressed managing and converting audiences across platforms to grow their fanbase. Our findings highlight the complex interplay between creator agency and labor, as well as yield implications for future design possibilities of creator empowerment and support.2023RMRenkai Ma et al.Pennsylvania State UniversitySocial Platform Design & User BehaviorLive Streaming & Content CreatorsCHI