Transgender women and transfeminine nonbinary people (transfems) rely on social media for community and critical resources that are rare offline. However, transfems face perpetual risks of those communities suddenly turning hostile or transphobic, forcing withdrawal and losing those resources. To investigate, we conducted a two-stage asynchronous remote communities (ARC) study with 27 total participants, drawn from transfeminine-heavy online communities. We found that transfems forced off crucial platforms by transphobic hostility experience digital solastalgia, distress caused by observing a platform’s character significantly erode over time. Moreover, through visual elicitation, we found that transfems perceive characteristics of locality and space in their online communities. These factors shape transfems’ disengagement strategies and community structures. Informed by this, we develop community-sourced design guidance for designers and admins on building robust online platforms that can better protect transfeminine communities, and investigate the transferable effects of these suggestions to other marginalized groups, such as disabled users.

Online platforms have become a key avenue for forming new relationships, especially for queer individuals. However, some individuals, such as those in asexual and aromantic communities (A-Spec), seek forms of relationships that trouble existing frameworks assumed by online platforms, such as dating apps. To investigate A-Spec needs, we conducted an 8-week ARC study with 38 A-Spec participants who have used online platforms for developing relationships. Participants described a mismatch between the design of dating apps and their approach to building relationships, suggesting platform design that combines affordances of dating apps and other social platforms. We thus outline a “process-oriented” paradigm for relationship-building platforms inspired by community design suggestions, supporting participants’ process of first establishing a low-stakes relationship and then co-constructing its properties. We also argue for a “pluralized” approach to defining identity and relationship in the design of online systems, upsetting default assumptions surrounding any given label.

The Discord platform allows marginalized people access to critical communities and resources unavailable elsewhere. Discord server staff often protect these communities through membership curation , which encompasses acts intended to deny or gate server access to certain users. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach, we interviewed fourteen Discord staff members to better understand the tensions between membership curation and open access to communities and resources. We found that excessive curation promotes a pattern of insular, atomized guarded cliques , which jeopardizes access to critical Discord spaces for marginalized users who clash with cultural or group norms, sometimes translating into severe offline harms. We determined that membership curation often functions as resistance against cultural change, and it is also used to minimize the need for active moderation. Based on these findings, we offer a series of transferable design recommendations and best practices for both the Discord platform and for server staff.

The Fediverse (the network encompassing Mastodon, Pleroma, Lemmy, etc.) provides a decentralized alternative to traditional social media platforms, making it both an important refuge for marginalized users and a platform which is well-suited for conducting mutual aid. One emergent type of moderation action for maintaining mutual aid spaces on the Fediverse is the use of community boundary blocklists, which we define as shared lists of Fediverse servers intended to be imported as a common blocklist. However, the use of community boundary blocklists has incited conflict on the Fediverse, with many users left cut off from their communities and sources of support due to actions outside of their control. Using an approach rooted in constructivist grounded theory, we interviewed nine Fediverse users, including a mix of community boundary blocklist curators, server staff, and regular users, to determine key tensions between community moderation and mutual aid practices. From our interviews, we identify the novel perspective of community stewardship as an act of mutual aid. We extend existing collective action and mutual aid frameworks to understand why this perspective conflicts with more typical mutual aid activities. We also observe how federation as a protocol encodes a negative form of consent, allowing users to interact by default and individuals to consent for their entire instance, leading to consent violations. From these insights, we develop a series of community-sourced suggestions for Fediverse platform designers, blocklist curators, and community staff to help address these conflicts and protect marginalized users.

Large language models (LLMs) are the new hot trend being rapidly integrated into products and services—often, in chatbots. LLM-powered chatbots are expected to respond to any number of topics, including topics central to gender identity . In light of rising anti-trans discourse, we examined how two popular LLMs responded to real-world English-language questions about trans identity taken from Quora. We employed reflexive analysis that centered our situated knowledges of the trans community. We found that LLMs return pro-trans responses, even when presented with highly transphobic user prompts. While we also found highly transphobic LLM responses, we found that anti-trans sentiment in LLMs was often subtle, requiring a deep positional understanding from diverse trans stakeholders to interpret. Based on these findings, we recommend diverging from current “value-neutral” approaches that validate transphobia by taking an “all sides” approach. We provide considerations for both the evaluation and design of LLMs that center positional expertise.

Social computing scholars have long known that people do not interact with knowledge in straightforward ways, especially in digital environments. While policies around knowledge are essential for targeting misinformation, they are value-laden; in choosing how to present information, we undermine non-traditional, often non-Western, ways of knowing. Epistemic injustice is the systemic exclusion of certain people and methods from the knowledge canon. Epistemic injustice chips away at one's testimony and vocabulary until they are stripped of their due right to know and understand. In this paper, we articulate how epistemic injustice in sociotechnical applications leads to material harm. Inspired by a hybrid collaborative autoethnography of 14 CSCW practitioners, we present three cases of epistemic injustice in sociotechnical applications: online transgender healthcare, identity sensemaking on r/bisexual, and Indigenous ways of knowing on r/AskHistorians. We further explore signature tensions across our autoethnographic materials and relate them to previous CSCW research areas and personal non-technological experiences. We argue that epistemic injustice can serve as a unifying and intersectional lens for CSCW research by surfacing dimensions of epistemic community and power. Finally, we present a call to action of three changes the CSCW community should make to move toward its own goals of research justice. We call for CSCW researchers to center individual experiences, bolster communities, and remediate issues of epistemic power as a means towards epistemic justice. In sum, we recount, synthesize, and propose solutions for the various forms of epistemic injustice that CSCW sites of study---including CSCW itself---propagate.

Relationship platforms (e.g., dating apps) are crucial tools for sapphics (trans women, cisgender women, and nonbinary people who are attracted to other sapphics). However, current platforms are not designed in a way that accounts for sapphic lived experience, especially the lived experience of sapphics who hold multiple marginalized identity characteristics. Even on platforms that do exist for sapphics, transgender women and nonbinary people are often subject to discrimination, fetishization, and stigmatization. To aid in the design of platforms that better serve the needs of multiply marginalized sapphics, we engaged a diverse group of 25 sapphics in six rounds of community discussion on key topics for relationship platform design. Based on participant discussions, we identify key challenges when designing for multiply marginalized sapphics around relationship structures, gender and sexuality classification, and safety priorities for interaction. We present two design priorities alongside community-sourced design directions which can help future designers address these challenges: identity-centric safety and community-based information formats.

Social media platforms are a place where people look for information and social support for mental health, resulting in both positive and negative effects on users. TikTok has gained notoriety for an abundance of mental health content and discourse. We present findings from a semi-structured interview study with 16 participants about mental health content and participants’ perceptions of community on TikTok. We find that TikTok’s community structure is permeable, allowing for self-discovery and understanding not found in traditional online communities. However, participants are wary of mental health information due to conflicts between a creator’s vulnerability and credibility. Our interviews suggest that the “For You Page" is a runaway train that encourages diverse community and content engagement but also displays harmful content that participants feel they cannot escape. We propose design implications to support better mental health, as well as implications for social computing research on community in algorithmic landscapes.

Social platforms open important doors to visibility for transgender people, through which they can pursue key goals such as broader recognition and normalization. However, each door is also potentially a trap, filled with risks and consequences - especially for those whose goals require visibility. Via a grounded theory interview study with 17 transfeminine content creators on TikTok, I find that, in an algorithmically mediated environment such as TikTok, users navigate potential doors to visibility and their associated traps via folk theorization. Moreover, I find that transfeminine creators employ multiple complex and overlapping folk theories, with actionable theories guiding the careful navigation of doors to visibility, and demotivational theories alerting creators to traps that are too risky to spring. I introduce five novel folk theories of TikTok spanning both the For You Page and content moderation systems which creators use to guide their decision making, and discuss how two cross-cutting issues, perceived algorithmic paternalism and decontextualization, illustrate major issues for transfeminine creators and opportunities for more supportive design.

The study of eating disorders online has a long tradition within CSCW and HCI scholarship. Research within this body of work highlights the types of content people with eating disorders post as well as the ways in which individuals use online spaces for acceptance, connection, and support. However, despite nearly a decade of research, online eating disorder scholarship in CSCW and HCI rarely accounts for the ways gender shapes online engagement. In this paper, we present empirical results from interviews with 14 trans people with eating disorders. Our findings illustrate how working with gender as an analytic lens allowed us to produce new knowledge about the embodiment of participation in online eating disorder spaces. We show how trans people with eating disorders use online eating disorder content to inform and set goals for their bodies and how, as gender minorities within online eating disorder spaces, trans people occupy marginal positions that make them more susceptible to harms, such as threats to eating disorder validity and gender authenticity. In our discussion, we consider life transitions in the context of gender and eating disorders and address how online eating disorder spaces operate as social transition machinery. We also call attention to the labor associated with online participation as a gender minority within online eating disorder spaces, outlining several design recommendations for supporting the ways trans people with eating disorders use online spaces. CONTENT WARNING: This paper is about the online experiences of trans people with eating disorders. We discuss eating disorders, related content (e.g., thinspiration) and practices (e.g., binge eating, restriction), and gender dysphoria. Please read with caution.

The increased importance of opaque, algorithmically-driven social platforms (e.g., Facebook, YouTube) to everyday users as a medium for self-presentation effectively requires users to speculate on how platforms work in order to decide how to behave to achieve their self-presentation goals. This speculation takes the form of folk theorization. Because platforms constantly change, users must constantly re-evaluate their folk theories. Based on an Asynchronous Remote Community study of LGBTQ+ social platform users with heightened self-presentation concerns, I present an updated model of the folk theorization process to account for platform change. Moreover, I find that both the complexity of the user's folk theorization and their overall relationship with the platform impact this theorization process, and present new concepts for examining and classifying these elements: theorization complexity level and perceived platform spirit. I conclude by proposing a folk theorization-based path towards an extensible algorithmic literacy that would support users in ongoing theorization.

Social platforms hold great promise for supporting marginalized communities, such as the LGBTQ+ community, yet they are frequently sites of further stigmatization and harm. By engaging a diverse sample of 31 US LGBTQ+ users in five qualitative, design-based value elicitation exercises, we find that misalignments between perceived platform values and the values of the marginalized users they serve are at the heart of this disconnect. We inductively identify two community-based design values for supporting LGBTQ+ users: self-determination and inclusion. These values can be used as design heuristics for both improving existing platforms as well as guiding future new platform development. Based on participant feedback, we provide directions for enacting these values to better align platform values with this marginalized population's needs.

Social interaction across multiple online platforms is a challenge for gender and sexual minorities (GSM) due to the stigmatization they face, which increases the complexity of their self-presentation decisions. These online interactions and identity disclosures can be more complicated for GSM in non-Western contexts due to consequentially different audiences and perceived affordances by the users, and limited baseline understanding of the conflation of these two with local norms and the opportunities they practically represent. Using focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews, we engaged with 61 Hijra individuals from Bangladesh, a severely stigmatized GSM from south Asia, to understand their overall online participation and disclosure behaviors through the lens of personal social media ecosystems. We find that along with platform audiences, affordances, and norms, participant skill/knowledge, and cultural influences also impact navigation through multiple platforms, resulting in differential benefits from privacy features. This impacts how Hijra perceive online spaces, and shape their self-presentation and disclosure behaviors over time. Content Warning: This paper discusses graphic contents (e.g. rape and sexual harassment) related to Hijra.

Online spaces play crucial roles in the lives of most LGBTQ+ people, but can also replicate and exacerbate existing intracommunity tensions and power dynamics, potentially harming subgroups within this marginalized community. Using qualitative probes and interviews, we engaged a diverse group of 25 bi+ (attracted to more than one gender) people to explore these dynamics. We identify two types of intracommunity conflict that bi+ users face (validity and normative conflicts), and a resulting set of what we call latent harms, or coping strategies for dealing with conflict that have delayed negative psychological effects for bi+ users. Using intersectionality as a sensitizing concept to understand shifting power dynamics embedded in sociotechnical contexts, we discuss challenges for future design work including the need to account for intracommunity dynamics within marginalized groups and the utility of disentangling conflict from harm.

Self-presentation is a process that is significantly complicated by the rise of algorithmic social media feeds, which obscure information about one's audience and environment. User understandings of these systems, and therefore user ability to adapt to them, are limited, and have recently been explored through the lens of folk theories. To date, little is understood of how these theories are formed, and how they tie to the self-presentation process in social media. This paper presents an exploratory look at the folk theory formation process and the interplay between folk theories and self-presentation via a 28-participant interview study. Results suggest that people draw from diverse sources of information when forming folk theories, and that folk theories are more complex, multifaceted and malleable than previously assumed. This highlights the need to integrate folk theories into both social media systems and theories of self-presentation.

Most US social media users engage regularly with multiple platforms. For LGBTQ+ people, this means making self-presentation decisions not just on one platform, but many. These choices are made in the face of sometimes-overlapping platform environments, which can have consequentially different norms, audiences, and affordances. Moreover, many LGBTQ+ users face high stakes in online self-presentation, due to the risk of stigmatization of their LGBTQ+ identity, increasing the importance of self-presentation decisions that enable them to achieve their goals and avoid stigmatization. This combination of environmental complexity and high stakes is not adequately accounted for in existing work on self-presentation, but doing so is important to support and understand the experiences of LGBTQ+ and other potentially stigmatized users. We adopt an ecological approach to an interview and cognitive mapping study of 20 LGBTQ+ social media users. We find that participants employ the platforms, audiences, affordances, and norms within what we call their "personal social media ecosystems" to avoid stigmatization while still allowing for expression of their LGBTQ+ identity and the flexibility to adjust their presentation over time.

As algorithmically-driven content curation has become an increasingly common feature of social media platforms, user resistance to algorithmic change has become more frequent and visible. These incidents of user backlash point to larger issues such as inaccurate understandings of how algorithmic systems work as well as mismatches between designer and user intent. Using a content analysis of 102,827 tweets from #RIPTwitter, a recent hashtag-based backlash to rumors about introducing algorithmic curation to Twitter's timeline, this study addresses the nature of user resistance in the form of the complaints being expressed, folk theories of the algorithmic system espoused by users, and how these folk theories potentially frame user reactions. We find that resistance to algorithmic change largely revolves around expectation violation, with folk theories acting as frames for reactions such that more detailed folk theories are expressed through more specific reactions to algorithmic change.

The popularity of social media platforms today makes them an important venue for self-presentation, but the unique affordances of these platforms challenge our existing models for understanding self-presentation behavior. In particular, social media provide multiple platforms on which the self may be presented, expand the role other individuals can play in one's own self-presentation, and expand the audience while often simultaneously providing less information about who is in that audience. This paper presents an affordance-based approach to self-presentation on social media platforms rooted in these three challenges and presents a systematic taxonomy for considering aspects of platforms that affect self-presentation. Results from an exploratory study of 193 users suggest significant variation in user perception of our proposed affordances across social media platforms, participant experience levels, and participant personality traits.