Demarked: A Strategy for Enhanced Abusive Speech Moderation through Counterspeech, Detoxification, and Message Management

TL;DR

The paper tackles persistent textual abuse online and the inadequacy of blanket blocking policies. It introduces Demarcation, a multi-step proactive mitigation framework that scores abusive speech on four aspects: severity scale; presence of a target; context scale; and legal scale, and surfaces actions including detoxification, counterspeech, blocking, or human intervention. It conducts a comprehensive survey across country regulations, platform policies, and NLP research, and devises a questionnaire-based methodology to harmonize technical tools with regulatory requirements. The goal is to inform future moderation strategies that are nuanced, legally aware, and more effective at preventing digital violence in varied jurisdictions.

Abstract

Despite regulations imposed by nations and social media platforms, such as recent EU regulations targeting digital violence, abusive content persists as a significant challenge. Existing approaches primarily rely on binary solutions, such as outright blocking or banning, yet fail to address the complex nature of abusive speech. In this work, we propose a more comprehensive approach called Demarcation scoring abusive speech based on four aspect -- (i) severity scale; (ii) presence of a target; (iii) context scale; (iv) legal scale -- and suggesting more options of actions like detoxification, counter speech generation, blocking, or, as a final measure, human intervention. Through a thorough analysis of abusive speech regulations across diverse jurisdictions, platforms, and research papers we highlight the gap in preventing measures and advocate for tailored proactive steps to combat its multifaceted manifestations. Our work aims to inform future strategies for effectively addressing abusive speech online.