Skip to main content
We gratefully acknowledge support from the Simons Foundation, member institutions, and all contributors. Donate
arXiv logo
Cornell University Logo

Computer Science > Social and Information Networks

arXiv:2209.02533 (cs)
[Submitted on 6 Sep 2022]

Title:Understanding Longitudinal Behaviors of Toxic Accounts on Reddit

Authors:Deepak Kumar, Jeff Hancock, Kurt Thomas, Zakir Durumeric
View PDF
Abstract:Toxic comments are the top form of hate and harassment experienced online. While many studies have investigated the types of toxic comments posted online, the effects that such content has on people, and the impact of potential defenses, no study has captured the long-term behaviors of the accounts that post toxic comments or how toxic comments are operationalized. In this paper, we present a longitudinal measurement study of 929K accounts that post toxic comments on Reddit over an 18~month period. Combined, these accounts posted over 14 million toxic comments that encompass insults, identity attacks, threats of violence, and sexual harassment. We explore the impact that these accounts have on Reddit, the targeting strategies that abusive accounts adopt, and the distinct patterns that distinguish classes of abusive accounts. Our analysis forms the foundation for new time-based and graph-based features that can improve automated detection of toxic behavior online and informs the nuanced interventions needed to address each class of abusive account.
Subjects: Social and Information Networks (cs.SI); Cryptography and Security (cs.CR); Computers and Society (cs.CY)
Cite as: arXiv:2209.02533 [cs.SI]
  (or arXiv:2209.02533v1 [cs.SI] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2209.02533

Submission history

From: Deepak Kumar [view email]
[v1] Tue, 6 Sep 2022 14:35:44 UTC (12,280 KB)
Full-text links:

Access Paper:

  • View PDF
  • TeX Source
  • Other Formats
view license
Current browse context:
cs.SI
< prev   |   next >
new | recent | 2022-09
Change to browse by:
cs
cs.CR
cs.CY

References & Citations

export BibTeX citation

Bookmark

BibSonomy logo Reddit logo

Bibliographic and Citation Tools

Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?)
Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?)
Litmaps (What is Litmaps?)
scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?)

Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article

alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?)
CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?)
DagsHub (What is DagsHub?)
Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?)
Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?)
Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?)
ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?)

Demos

Replicate (What is Replicate?)
Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?)
TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?)

Recommenders and Search Tools

Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?)
CORE Recommender (What is CORE?)

arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)