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• Paper (preprint)

Abstract

Social media platforms offer flagging, a technical feature that empowers users to report inappropriate posts or bad actors to reduce online harm. This feature, available now on all major social media platforms, is enacted through deceptively simple interfaces that disguise complex underlying interactions among users, algorithms, and moderators. Through interviewing 25 social media users with prior flagging experience, we examine end-users’ understanding of flagging procedures, explore the factors that motivate them to flag, and surface their cognitive and privacy concerns. We found that a lack of procedural transparency in flagging mechanisms creates gaps in users’ folk theories about how the mechanisms operate, yet users recognize the importance of platforms providing flagging options. Our analysis highlights how flags raise critical questions about distributing labor and responsibility for addressing online harm between platforms and users. We recommend innovations in the flagging design space that enhance user comprehension, ensure privacy, and reduce cognitive burdens.

BibTeX citation

@article{qian2026flagging,
    author = {Qian, Alice and Montague, Kaitlin and Jhaver, Shagun},
    journal = {ACM Transactions on Social Computing},
    title = {Cleaning Up the Streets: Understanding Motivations, Folk Theories, and Concerns of Users Flagging Social Media Content},
    year = {2026}, 
    publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery}, 
    address = {New York, NY, USA}, 
    journal = {Trans. Soc. Comput.}, 
    numpages = {28},
}