Standing up to problematic content on social media: which objection strategies draw the audience's approval?

Problematic content on social media can be countered through objections raised by other community members. While intended to deter offenses, objections can influence the surrounding audience observing the interaction, leading to their collective approval or disapproval. The results of an experiment manipulating seven types of objections against common types of offenses indicate audiences' support for objections that implore via appeals and disapproval of objections that threaten the offender, as they view the former as more moral, appropriate, and effective compared to the latter. Furthermore, audiences tend to prefer more benign and less threatening objections regardless of the offense severity (following the principle of "taking the high road") instead of objections proportionate to the offense ("an eye for an eye"). Taken together, these results show how objections to offensive behaviors may impact collective perceptions on social media, paving the way for interventions to foster effective objection strategies in social media discussions. Problematic content that involves misleading information or contains offensive language is prevalent on social media. Other users can confront it by objecting to this content, but the effectiveness of different objection strategies is not well understood. We conducted a randomized controlled experiment in a simulated social media environment to investigate how audiences interpret (e.g., as appropriate, justified, and persuasive) and react to them (e.g., intentions to upvote and downvote). The results indicate that audiences approve objections that appeal to consciousness, as they are viewed as more appropriate, justified, and effective; conversely, objections that undermine the offender's reputation or imply physical threats are most likely to be downvoted because they are judged as morally questionable. Furthermore, audiences prefer more benign and less threatening objections, even when encountering severe offenses. These findings shed light on what objections-even as all of them call out offensive content-find favor in audiences' eyes, which can be leveraged for interventions and trainings in how to counter offenses on social media.