Harmonizing the Cacophony with MIC: An Affordance-aware Framework for Platform Moderation

We demonstrate the advantages of using an affordance-aware framework like MIC by analyzing several social platforms over the course of two case studies. First, we analyze individual platforms using MIC and demonstrate how MIC can be used to examine the effects of platform changes on the moderation ecosystem and identify potential new challenges in moderation. Next, we use MIC to systematically compare three platforms and propose potential moderation mechanisms that each can adapt. Moderation researchers and stakeholders can use such comparisons to uncover where platforms can emulate the moderation practices of successful, established, and better-studied platforms, as well as learn from the pitfalls other platforms have encountered. © 2022 ACM.