📚New in the library: Quality Scores
New research found that adding a quality score to posts & comments, alongside popularity cues, can nudge users to engage with higher-quality content, mitigating the negative effects of relying on popularity alone.
www.prosocialdesign.org/library/qual...
There’s evidence that clear community rules lead to healthier interactions, but do some rules work better than others?
@galenweld.bsky.social's research into Reddit user values and governance begins to draw a picture.
Join us to discuss
📆 April 23 at 1pm ET
luma.com/yqejhsoj?tk=...
There’s evidence that clear community rules lead to healthier interactions, but do some rules work better than others? Galen Weld's research into Reddit user values and governance begins to draw a picture.
📆Join us to discuss April 23 at 1pm ET. luma.com/yqejhsoj?tk=...
What if social media was designed to support local communities?
That’s the question @newpublic.org had in mind when they built Roundabout: a local community platform built on AT Protocol 🦋
We sat down with four members of their team to learn more about it. www.prosocialdesign.org/blog/buildin...
New blog post: we broke down a paper by our own David Grüning, Julia Kamin et al. on how researchers study whether a platform design change makes social media more prosocial, when you don't work there and can't access its systems.
The answer? It's complicated
www.prosocialdesign.org/blog/testing...
There’s evidence that clear community rules lead to healthier interactions, but do some rules work better than others? Galen Weld's research into Reddit user values and governance begins to draw a picture.
📆Join us to discuss April 23 at 1pm ET. luma.com/yqejhsoj?tk=...
Can social media algorithms be designed to foster pluralism? Does doing so come at the expense of engagement? Kylan Rutherford from the Prosocial Ranking Challenge put that question to the test in a large-scale field experiment.
He joins to share what he's learned 📅April 29. luma.com/pvxgxop8
A reminder that prosocial designs are not one-size-fits-all-nations, and that some of the risks of crowd-sourced solutions fall on the crowd.
Meta's Oversight Board cautions against the expansion of Community Notes to countries with repressive regimes “until Meta can demonstrate robust contributor privacy protections" for the volunteer users behind the notes.
www.socialmediatoday.com/news/metas-o...
You might think chronological feeds would reduce toxic partisanship, but evidence so far suggests otherwise.
What does research say platforms can do? Tune their algorithms to dial divisive political content down.
www.prosocialdesign.org/blog/do-soci...
Join us for Pro-Social with @newpublic.org and the team behind their social platform Roundabout. We’ll talk to them about designing digital spaces that genuinely support healthy local communities.
📅Thursday, March 26, 1pm ET
🎟️ Register: luma.com/5vzxn9vn?tk=...
Social media feeds are optimized for engagement, but what if they were also optimized for better disagreement?
@jonathanstray.bsky.social joined us to talk about prosocial ranking and designing feeds that support social cohesion without flattening conflict. www.prosocialdesign.org/blog/pro-soc...
Privacy Control Radar
Incredible new tool from @asml.cyber.harvard.edu.web.brid.gy charting platform privacy policies on levels of transparency and opt-in vs opt-out, both today and overtime.
analytics.transparency.berkmancenter.org#q1
New study: Researchers looked at a 2022 policy change at TikTok that added a regional identity tag, and found it reduced impolite language. It may be the first (quasi) field study that shows common identity markers can improve interactions.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
In theory, X is simply scaling a platform intervention that has evidence behind it (see our library entry ⤵️). We hope, though, that public research will follow to confirm if that’s the case.
www.prosocialdesign.org/library/crow...
X has rolled out "Collaborative Notes," an AI-boosted version of Community Notes.
Community Notes have been shown to reduce the spread of misinfo, but they rely on volunteers to create. Now AI will help draft more, which still need approval from diverse human contributors to appear. bit.ly/3OLP0br
Can AI chatbots be embedded with prosocial goals?
Lena Slachmuijlder from @socialcohesiontech.bsky.social rounds up four perspectives on how AI design could be embedded with prosocial goals including cooperation, human connection, & flourishing.
techandsocialcohesion.substack.com/p/the-ai-coo...
Can social media feeds support “better conflict”?
Join us for a conversation with Jonathan Stray on Friday Feb 20 @1pm ET on prosocial ranking research that explores promising algorithmic approaches to reducing dangerous division.
luma.com/n8649ikc?tk=...
You might have seen, we updated the confidence rating for digital self-control apps to ✨convincing✨
Research now shows stronger evidence these tools help reduce unwanted social media use. Get geeky with us & go behind the scenes on how we made this decision: www.prosocialdesign.org/blog/we-find...
Update: Insta's "Your Algorithm" is now available to all users though, as SMT points out, it's a question mark how many will take advantage of it:
News site comment sections can be oases of public discourse because newsrooms are invested in quality. Encouraging to read they may be having a renaissance according to @benwhitelaw.bsky.social who shares lessons from moderating comments at the Times of London.
newpublic.substack.com/p/why-newsro...
We've published a new report!
Last October, we hosted a convening with Roblox to explore how researchers and platform teams can collaborate on actionable research to foster connection in social gaming.
Here's what we did: www.prosocialdesign.org/blog/catalyz...
Why It Matters Platforms are becoming increasingly proficient in their ability to capture and keep users' attention, which can have an adverse effect on individuals' sense of satisfaction and wellbeing. Digital Self-Control Apps give individuals who are aware of the potential detrimental effects of social media and other engagement platforms a promising way to exercise agency and improve their wellbeing.
Our friends at the @prosocialdesign.bsky.social recently updated the effectiveness of apps for regulating your time spent on social media, like @hankgreen.bsky.social’s Focus Friend, from “tentative” to “convincing” based on new research from Denmark.
www.prosocialdesign.org/library/digi...
Join our Pro-Social on Jan 22 at 1pm ET with Dr. Kimberly Voll, CEO of @braceyourselfgames.com and co-founder of the Digital Thriving Playbook.
An informal conversation on designing for positive, fulfilling digital experiences.
Register 👉 luma.com/cn2727bq?tk=...
Join our Pro-Social on Jan 22 at 1pm ET with Dr. Kimberly Voll, CEO of @braceyourselfgames.com and co-founder of the Digital Thriving Playbook.
An informal conversation on designing for positive, fulfilling digital experiences.
Register 👉 luma.com/cn2727bq?tk=...
We'll be honest: many of the 30 studies reviewed are new to us. We're excited to dig in and see which prosocial designs we can add to our library.
Screenshot of paper abstract with highlighted quote "our findings revel that 27 studies documented improved intergroup attitudes across diverse contexts..."
Social media has been implicated as a divisive global force — though scholars debate how much blame it really deserves. But a new review of 30 empirical studies finds it can also be used to reduce distrust and animosity across divides.
scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/server/api/c...
And credit to the researchers for including an engagement measure. One of the biggest barriers we hear from industry to putting prosocial design into practice is the belief that it hurts engagement. Evidence that it doesn’t—or better yet, that it improves engagement—makes uptake far more likely.
Time on page depending on post type. Connective = 2.84 minutes on page vs Non-Connective at 2.34.
Idea for platforms that want to reduce toxic division & boost engagement: uprank posts that use "connective language."
New research finds that people will spend 25% more time reading posts that use phrases like “this is just my opinion” or “I may be wrong."
mediaengagement.org/research/con...
New on the blog: a conversation with Sabhanaz Rashid Diya asks, whose values are baked into “prosocial” tech design? From content moderation to the limits of exporting the DSA, it looks at why global defaults keep failing the Global Majority. www.prosocialdesign.org/blog/prosoci...