arXiv subjects

Zaria Jalan

Publications and source records attributed to Zaria Jalan.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

The Prosocial Ranking Challenge: Reducing Polarization on Social Media without Sacrificing Engagement

We report the first direct comparisons of multiple alternative social media algorithms on multiple platforms on outcomes of societal interest. We used a browser extension to modify which posts were shown to desktop social media users, randomly assigning 9,386 users to a control group or one of five alternative ranking algorithms which simultaneously altered content across three platforms for six months during the US 2024 presidential election. This reduced our preregistered index of affective polarization by an average of 0.03 standard deviations (p < 0.05), including a 1.5 degree decrease in differences between the 100 point inparty and outparty feeling thermometers. We saw reductions in active use time for Facebook (-0.37 min/day) and Reddit (-0.2 min/day), but an increase of 0.32 min/day (p < 0.01) for X/Twitter. We saw an increase in reports of negative social media experiences but found no effects on well-being, news knowledge, outgroup empathy, perceptions of and support for partisan violence. This implies that bridging content can improve some societal outcomes without necessarily conflicting with the engagement-driven business model of social media.

cs.SI↗

arXiv2024

AI and the Future of Digital Public Squares

Two substantial technological advances have reshaped the public square in recent decades: first with the advent of the internet and second with the recent introduction of large language models (LLMs). LLMs offer opportunities for a paradigm shift towards more decentralized, participatory online spaces that can be used to facilitate deliberative dialogues at scale, but also create risks of exacerbating societal schisms. Here, we explore four applications of LLMs to improve digital public squares: collective dialogue systems, bridging systems, community moderation, and proof-of-humanity systems. Building on the input from over 70 civil society experts and technologists, we argue that LLMs both afford promising opportunities to shift the paradigm for conversations at scale and pose distinct risks for digital public squares. We lay out an agenda for future research and investments in AI that will strengthen digital public squares and safeguard against potential misuses of AI.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2024

Annotator in the Loop: A Case Study of In-Depth Rater Engagement to Create a Bridging Benchmark Dataset

With the growing prevalence of large language models, it is increasingly common to annotate datasets for machine learning using pools of crowd raters. However, these raters often work in isolation as individual crowdworkers. In this work, we regard annotation not merely as inexpensive, scalable labor, but rather as a nuanced interpretative effort to discern the meaning of what is being said in a text. We describe a novel, collaborative, and iterative annotator-in-the-loop methodology for annotation, resulting in a 'Bridging Benchmark Dataset' of comments relevant to bridging divides, annotated from 11,973 textual posts in the Civil Comments dataset. The methodology differs from popular anonymous crowd-rating annotation processes due to its use of an in-depth, iterative engagement with seven US-based raters to (1) collaboratively refine the definitions of the to-be-annotated concepts and then (2) iteratively annotate complex social concepts, with check-in meetings and discussions. This approach addresses some shortcomings of current anonymous crowd-based annotation work, and we present empirical evidence of the performance of our annotation process in the form of inter-rater reliability. Our findings indicate that collaborative engagement with annotators can enhance annotation methods, as opposed to relying solely on isolated work conducted remotely. We provide an overview of the input texts, attributes, and annotation process, along with the empirical results and the resulting benchmark dataset, categorized according to the following attributes: Alienation, Compassion, Reasoning, Curiosity, Moral Outrage, and Respect.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2024

A Mechanism-Based Approach to Mitigating Harms from Persuasive Generative AI

Recent generative AI systems have demonstrated more advanced persuasive capabilities and are increasingly permeating areas of life where they can influence decision-making. Generative AI presents a new risk profile of persuasion due the opportunity for reciprocal exchange and prolonged interactions. This has led to growing concerns about harms from AI persuasion and how they can be mitigated, highlighting the need for a systematic study of AI persuasion. The current definitions of AI persuasion are unclear and related harms are insufficiently studied. Existing harm mitigation approaches prioritise harms from the outcome of persuasion over harms from the process of persuasion. In this paper, we lay the groundwork for the systematic study of AI persuasion. We first put forward definitions of persuasive generative AI. We distinguish between rationally persuasive generative AI, which relies on providing relevant facts, sound reasoning, or other forms of trustworthy evidence, and manipulative generative AI, which relies on taking advantage of cognitive biases and heuristics or misrepresenting information. We also put forward a map of harms from AI persuasion, including definitions and examples of economic, physical, environmental, psychological, sociocultural, political, privacy, and autonomy harm. We then introduce a map of mechanisms that contribute to harmful persuasion. Lastly, we provide an overview of approaches that can be used to mitigate against process harms of persuasion, including prompt engineering for manipulation classification and red teaming. Future work will operationalise these mitigations and study the interaction between different types of mechanisms of persuasion.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2024

Re-Ranking News Comments by Constructiveness and Curiosity Significantly Increases Perceived Respect, Trustworthiness, and Interest

Online commenting platforms have commonly developed systems to address online harms by removing and down-ranking content. An alternative, under-explored approach is to focus on up-ranking content to proactively prioritize prosocial commentary and set better conversational norms. We present a study with 460 English-speaking US-based news readers to understand the effects of re-ranking comments by constructiveness, curiosity, and personal stories on a variety of outcomes related to willingness to participate and engage, as well as perceived credibility and polarization in a comment section. In our rich-media survey experiment, participants across these four ranking conditions and a control group reviewed prototypes of comment sections of a Politics op-ed and Dining article. We found that outcomes varied significantly by article type. Up-ranking curiosity and constructiveness improved a number of measures for the Politics article, including perceived Respect, Trustworthiness, and Interestingness of the comment section. Constructiveness also increased perceptions that the comments were favorable to Republicans, with no condition worsening perceptions of partisans. Additionally, in the Dining article, personal stories and constructiveness rankings significantly improved the perceived informativeness of the comments. Overall, these findings indicate that incorporating prosocial qualities of speech into ranking could be a promising approach to promote healthier, less polarized dialogue in online comment sections.

cs.HC↗