The majority preferred quashing harmful misinformation over protecting free speech; Republicans were consistently less willing than Democrats or Independents to delete posts or penalize the accounts that posted them

Kozyreva, Anastasia, Stefan M. Herzog, Stephan Lewandowsky, Ralph Hertwig, Philipp Lorenz-Spreen, Mark Leiser, and Jason Reifler. 2022. “Free Speech Vs. Harmful Misinformation: Moral Dilemmas in Online Content Moderation.” PsyArXiv. June 18. doi:10.31234/osf.io/2pc3a

Abstract: When moderating content online, two key values may come into conflict: protecting freedom of expression and preventing harm. Robust rules based in part on how citizens think about these moral dilemmas are necessary to deal with the unprecedented scale and urgency of this conflict in a principled way. Yet little is known about people's judgments and preferences around content moderation. We examined such moral dilemmas in a conjoint survey experiment where respondents (N = 2,564) indicated whether they would remove problematic social media posts on election denial, anti-vaccination, Holocaust denial, and climate change denial and whether they would take punitive action against the accounts. Respondents were shown key information about the user and their post, as well as the consequences of the misinformation. The majority preferred quashing harmful misinformation over protecting free speech. Respondents were more likely to remove posts and suspend accounts if the consequences were severe and if it was a repeated offence. Features related to the account itself (the person behind the account, their partisanship, and number of followers) had little to no effect on respondents' decisions. Content moderation of harmful misinformation was a partisan issue: Across all four scenarios, Republicans were consistently less willing than Democrats or Independents to delete posts or penalize the accounts that posted them. Our results can inform the design of transparent rules of content moderation for human and algorithmic moderators.