Batch Content Report Option

When to use it?

In recognition of the coordinated nature of some harassment campaigns, platforms need to give users the ability to report multiple abusive accounts and content in bulk, to reduce the burden of piecemeal reporting.(1)

Platforms that experience network harassment should include this pattern in their reporting process to allow users to identify content that is used in this type of harassment.

Including this pattern before the issue arises could help to eliminate network or campaign harassment before it begins.

How does it work?

Provide users the option to search for specific abusive accounts and report multiple instances of abusive content rather than one by one.

Provide the ability for users to select multiple accounts or batches of abusive content in the reporting forms rather than one at a time.

The process should be easy enough for people to report pile-ons but not so frictionless, that abusers batch report people they disagree with just for fun or to be malicious.

Advantages

Providing users the ability to report multiple posts in one report eliminates the necessity of users creating unique reports for each user and post.

It can also help platforms better target networks of harassers by tracing the users of batch reports to users who are central to a network of harassment, and therefore should be highest priority to address.

Adding a specification for suspected bot activity would also provide potentially useful data for identifying networks of bots.

Disadvantages

Enabling users with this ability could lead to abuse by harassers, as they could target specific groups of users through falsely reporting their content in a batch report.

To prevent this from affecting falsely reported users, batch reports should be examined by real people to see if the posts are related and part of network harassment

Examples

Twitter’s reporting form – allows users to add multiple links.
(Screenshot taken September 2021)

References

(1) Vilk, Viktorya, Elodie Vialle, and Matt Bailey. “No Excuse for Abuse: What Social Media Companies Can Do Now to Combat Online Harassment and Empower Users.” Edited by Summer Lopez and Suzanne Nossel. PEN AMERICA. PEN America, March 31, 2021. https://pen.org/report/no-excuse-for-abuse/.