Platform gaslighting: A user-centric insight into social media corporate communications of content moderation

This paper delves into communications dynamics between social media platforms and their users as they navigate the opacity of governance policies. Using Meta and TikTok as case studies, we reveal that gaslighting – traditionally linked with relationship abuse where one partner undermines the validity of the other's experience – has become a pervasive communication strategy for platforms, manifesting in numerous instances where automated and human platform communications have directly contradicted users’ experiences, evidence and research. We analyse 36 diverse interview datasets and six public platform responses to content moderation issues, highlighting the systemic nature of this phenomenon within digital spaces. By moving beyond shadowbanning and isolated platform-to-user dialogue, we expand the scholarly understanding of platform gaslighting to encompass a broader spectrum of governance-related communications. Our dataset draws from seemingly disparate groups who share moderation experiences: Jewish creators engaged in combating antisemitism, Palestinian creators advocating for human rights and sex-positive creators, whose expertise and stories are dismissed and belittled by platforms. Our participants' experiences demonstrate that conceptualising platform communications as gaslighting can help expose corporate power imbalances in platform-user interactions, particularly in cases where platforms govern through undisclosed practices such as shadowbanning and de-platforming triggered by malicious flagging, along with ambiguous communication from their representatives. We demonstrate how the dismissal or minimisation of participants’ traumatic experiences by platforms’ automated processes and human teams is weaponised to inflict epistemic injustice, consolidate power, safeguard public image and evade accountability.