Comparing the Perceived Legitimacy of Content Moderation Processes: Contractors, Algorithms, Expert Panels, and Digital Juries

While research continues to investigate and improve the accuracy, fairness, normative appropriateness of content moderation processes on large social media platforms, even best process cannot be effective if users reject its authority as illegitimate. We present a survey experiment comparing perceived institutional legitimacy four popular processes. conducted within-subjects in which we showed US Facebook decisions randomized description whether those were made by paid contractors, algorithms, expert panels, or juries users. Prior work suggests that will have highest due benefits judicial independence democratic representation. However, panels had greater than algorithms juries. Moreover, outcome alignment -agreement with decision - played larger role determining legitimacy. These results suggest incorporating oversight underscore any face challenges derived from disagreement about outcomes.