Content Moderation and Community Standards: The Disconnect Between Policy and User Experiences Reporting Harmful and Offensive Content on Social Media
2025-07-29
Moderating harmful and offensive content on social media is challenging for digital platforms that seek to balance regulation and censorship across a diverse user group. It is further complicated by discrepancies between platform policies, user expectations and user experiences. Informed by focus groups with 104 Australians aged 13–74 years, and a walkthrough analysis of three social media platforms, this article examines users' experiences reporting harmful and offensive content on Facebook, Instagram and X. It explores user expectations and the complexities that arise when platforms claim to maintain Community Standards, while prioritising (only some) users' freedom of expression and wellbeing. It argues that existing platform policies and content moderation relating to reporting harmful and offensive content are inconsistent, contradictory and non‐transparent, and this is most acutely felt by users from marginalised communities who are most likely to be the targets of harmful and offensive content. We argue that moderation of harmful and offensive content should expand beyond binary retaining or removal. Rather, it could utilise innovative, context and socially‐specific prospective outcomes, which could contribute towards user autonomy, freedom of expression, shared community learning of social norms and a reduction in the silencing of marginalised users.