Prosocial Design Network

Developing a Measure of Community Health in Games Let’s talk about (digital) community health.

It comes up a lot in conversations at PDN: how would you create a measure of platform prosociality? It looks like Rachel Kowert has been thinking for a while along the same lines, but in games. A thoughtful read from an expert gaming T&S.
rachelkowert.substack.com/p/developing...

We love a literature review. This one looks at how tech interventions - everything from social media reduction to conversation robots - can reduce loneliness and isolation. 40 RCTs with mixed results - and group psychological interventions (below) for the win.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Japan’s Yahoo News site has AI feature asking commenter to reconsider vulgar words, phrases Offensive comments posted on the site declined by over 20% since the feature was introduced.

Update: Yahoo Japan now reports seeing a 24% drop in offensive comments since instituting the feature: asianews.network/japans-yahoo...

The dream of the Fediverse is alive on Threads Decentralized media is off to an agonizingly slow start — but there are glimmers of progress

Casey Newton charts one small - but promising - step in building the fediverse (which - in concept - could free users from platform fiefdoms).
www.platformer.news/threads-fedi...

The New Digg’s Plan to Use AI for Community Moderation Humans weigh in.

Something to keep an eye on: According to CJR, Digg is reinventing itself using AI/LLM-fueled content moderation that look like they could include some prosocial interventions, like intervening to de-escalate tense conversations, "allowing users to dig deeper."
www.cjr.org/analysis/new...

Healthier Personalization with Surveys Leif Sigerson | Senior Data Scientist, Data Platforms Science, Stephanie Chen | Staff Quantitative Product Researcher, Product Research…

We've shared before about efforts to foster "Better Feeds" that create long-term value - as opposed to short-term dopamine hits - for users. One strategy is to rely on user surveys (over, say, clicks) - an approach Pinterest recently wrote about from their experience: medium.com/pinterest-en...

A year in the making, the Council on Technology and Social Cohesion's Blueprint on "Prosocial Tech Design Governance" is out - and gives platforms and policy makers a guide to building spaces that foster social cohesion, "the glue that holds society together."
toda.org/assets/files...

X Implements New Measures To Detect Manipulation of Community Notes X has added a new method to detect coordinated notes activity.

One of the critiques of Community Notes is that they can be gamed - and so can be biased. It looks like X has taken note: www.socialmediatoday.com/news/x-forme...

Yahoo! News Japan Introduces AI-Powered Comment Review System Yahoo! News Japan introduces AI-powered "Comment Review Model" to promote healthier discussions by suggesting revisions to potentially offensive comments.

Japan may be ahead of the curve in using AI to foster healthy discussions. Yahoo! News, one of Japan's most popular sites, suggests ways users can rephrase their comments to be more constructive - going back to last fall.
www.thepickool.com/yahoo-news-j...

Expanding TikTok's Mental Health Education Fund and well-being features - Newsroom | TikTok Today, we're launching new initiatives to champion well-being and enhance reliable mental health information from trusted sources on TikTok. We're launching in-app guided meditation exercises for our ...

TikTok looks like it's taking teen sleep seriously - by adding default guided meditation for anyone under 18 opening their app after 10pm. Even more surprising: in tests they say 98% of teens keep meditating. (18+ can also turn on default meditation after hours.)
newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/tiktok...

TSF Matchmaking Pilot Program For the past few years, TSF has convened groups and connected both people and organizations on an informal basis as part of our goal to share knowledge and facilitate advancements in trust and safety....

If you work in the Trust & Safety field in academia, industry, civil society (nonprofit) or government (policymaker) and are looking for informal or formal cross-sector collaborations - the Trust and Safety Foundation just started a pilot "Matchmaking" program to help connect you:

Addressing excessive social media use: effects of perceived intrusiveness and psychological reactance on compliance with Douyin healthy use reminders Purpose Excessive social media use has emerged as a pressing issue in recent years, prompting concerns about its adverse effects on users’ physical and mental well-being. In response to these concerns...

Douyin, like its international counterpart TikTok, uses "health use reminders" to cut down on phone addiction. A new survey of Chinese college students suggests why they may not be working...
www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

Pinterest Tests Alerts To Keep Teens off the App During School Hours Pinterest is backing several measures to curb potentially harmful app usage.

It looks like Pinterest is testing an intervention that prompts teens not to use the app during school hours. We hope they make their test results public!
www.socialmediatoday.com/news/pintere...

CLR:SKY CLR:SKY is a Bluesky interface enhancement designed to shift the tone of public discourse within the platform. Whether you need a quick rewording suggestion, a tone check, or help seeing a different...

Just discovered CLR:SKY, a Bsky add-on that builds on SO many promising trends in prosocial design: (1) using LLMs and (2) middleware to (3) empower us all to (4) have more productive - and healthier - conversations on line.
www.clrsky.ai

Great new report from Devika Malik and the Toda Peace Institute on the state of prosocial regulation in the Global South. techandsocialcohesion.org/wp-content/u...

Is it prosocial design’s time to shine? With some platforms retreating from a reactive, enforcement-driven approach to Trust & Safety, there’s a stronger case than ever to lean into proactive and prosocial practices that prevent toxicity fr...

Great to see Alice Hunsberger @ Everything in moderation ask the question "Is it prosocial design's time to shine?" You know our answer!

New preprint takes a creative approach to reducing the spread of disinformation (and possibly outrage-laden posts) - by drawing people's attention to the emotional content of a post. Extra plus: it's non-Western study (this one's from Japan). arxiv.org/pdf/2503.24037

[PUBLIC] Communities Research_02.25.2025_Final_Published 1 REMODELING THE INTERNET

The Verge asked 2,000 people what they wanted from digital spaces. Their answer: (small) communities and (human) connection.
docs.google.com/presentation...

YouTube video by Knight-Georgetown Institute Better Feeds: Algorithms That Put People First - Webinar

Matt Motyl breaks down why user engagement signals (likes, clicks, etc.) aren't a good predictor of what users *value* - with a bowl of chips...
youtu.be/Dy_0zbMJWbw?...

New report from the Council on Tech and Social Cohesion on "upstream approaches to tackling technology-facilitated gender-based violence." A great overview of pro-active and prosocial design solutions applied to one of today's most urgent challenges. techandsocialcohesion.org/wp-content/u...

More than a feeling: How positive platforms impact performance Marketers are constantly searching for any advantage that will improve their results. New research reveals there’s one thing that many businesses have been overlooking: positive ad environments.

Report from Pinterest helps make the case that giving users a positive experience is in a platform's self-interest (or, in this case, self-pinterest?).
business.pinterest.com/en-au/blog/h...

Threads Is Working On an Option To Replicate Your X Follows The process could make it easier to transition from X to Threads.

For fans of "data portability" (i.e. empowering users to move between social media platforms), it looks like Threads is trying to make it easy for people to "import" their X network. Not clear this is sustainable model, but a step in the right direction? www.socialmediatoday.com/news/threads...

Open-Minded Badge – Prosocial Design Network To foster open-minded dialogue

New in the Library: "Open Minded Badges" aim to promote intellectual humility and productive online conversations. Although we only find tentative evidence they're effective, we're excited to see research of proactive, prosocial designs - and hope to see more!
www.prosocialdesign.org/library/open...

A research agenda for encouraging prosocial behaviour on social media - Nature Human Behaviour Dörr et al. argue that research on social media has mainly focused on antisocial behaviours and call for more research on the ways in which social media platforms can empower prosocial behaviour.

It's a good day when a couple of top researchers say we need to invest more in a research agenda for prosocial design. We couldn't agree more!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Making Reddit Easier: New Tools for Engaging and Contributing Today we announced new tools that enhance the redditor posting experience.

We recently reviewed a design - Post Guidance - that lets subreddits give in-time feedback if people are breaking a subreddit rule (which results in more high quality posts). Now it looks like Reddit has riffed and expanded on that idea - hopefully w/ similar results. redditinc.com/blog/making-...

Regarding transparency: PDN's managing director participated in the report's working group.

There's agreement that engagement-based feeds create harms for individuals and society and reverse chronological feeds are sub-optimal and unrealistic alternatives. KGI's report offers guidelines - centered on transparency, agency, evidence and long-term user value - for building healthier feeds.

Integrity Institute read through all those platform DSA filings, so we didn't have to. Great report, with good primers on transparency regulations (from EU, UK and Oz). drive.google.com/file/d/1MJHx...

GitHub - roostorg/awesome-safety-tools: A curated collection of open source tools for online safety A curated collection of open source tools for online safety - roostorg/awesome-safety-tools

It's a good day for Responsible Tech: Columbia's Tooling Consortium just unveiled its initial "awesome" github resource for robust open online safety tools (ROOST). Creating healthy spaces online just got a little easier.
github.com/roostorg/awe...

Sharing News Left and Right: Frictions and Misinformation on Twitter Abstract. On 20 October 2020, prior to the US presidential election, Twitter modified its user interface for sharing social media posts. In an effort to re

Friction is often proposed as a way to stem the spread of misinformation. This 2024 study suggests that it *does* decrease reshares of misinfo, but there's a big downside; it may reduce reshares of high-factual information even more.
academic.oup.com/ej/advance-a...