Targeted Characteristics Report Option
An option in the reporting process that allows users to report on why they feel they were targeted.
How does this mitigate hate?
Users are often targeted by harassers for specific characteristics (such as race, religion, gender). Giving users the opportunity to identify why they are being targeted will help platforms overarching mitigation strategies and help them create tools and experiences that better protect targeted populations.
When to use it?
Platforms that experience hateful content targeting individuals should include this pattern in the reporting process to allow users to more specifically report their experience.
Including this pattern before the issue arises could help to mitigate hateful content before it spreads by collecting information about who is being targeted and in what contexts.
How does it work?
Users should be able to express the specific identity characteristic they believe motivated the harassment (including actual or perceived race, religion, gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation).
Reporting options should be easy to use and the ability to identify these targeted characteristics should be easy to find.
Advantages
Providing users the ability to specify why they were targeted can help users feel that their experience has been thoroughly recognized and reported.
Having specific characteristics to report also contributes valuable data for training platform’s machine-learning algorithms to better detect certain types of hate and harassment.
Having these characteristics reported will give platforms more insight into who is being targeted and will help give context to why and when they are targeted allowing them to better create safer experiences.
Disadvantages
Bad actors on a platform can use these more discrete reporting options to specifically report and target people and the reporting option could be misused to kick these targets of harassment off a platform if not investigated properly.
Examples
Bumble reporting dialog allows users to select specific targeted attributes.
(Screenshot taken June 2021)
YouTube reporting dialog allows some clarification of targeted attributes.
(Screenshot taken June 2021)
References
Amnesty International, and Elemental AI. “Troll Patrol Findings.” Troll Patrol Report, 2018. https://decoders.amnesty.org/projects/troll-patrol/findings.
Escobar, Arturo. Designs for the Pluriverse. Duke Univ Pr, 2018.