The Pin of Shame: Examining Content Creators' Adoption of Pinning Inappropriate Comments as a Moderation Strategy
For HCI researchers and platform designers, this work reveals the motivations and outcomes of an emerging user-driven moderation tactic, informing the design of tools to address content-based harm.
This study explores how content creators adopt the 'Pin of Shame'—pinning norm-violating comments to prompt shaming—as a moderation strategy, finding through interviews with 20 creators that it serves to punish, educate, and enforce community norms while supporting impression management, but also carries risks.
Many social media platforms allow content creators to pin user comments in response to their content. Once pinned, a comment remains fixed at the top of the comments section, regardless of subsequent activity or the selected sorting order. The "Pin of Shame" refers to an innovative re-purposing of this feature, where creators intentionally pin norm-violating comments to spotlight them and prompt shaming responses from their audiences. This study explores how creators adopt this emerging moderation tactic, examining their motivations, its outcomes, and how it compares-procedurally and in effect-to other content moderation strategies. Through interviews with 20 content creators who had pinned negative comments on their posts, we find that the Pin of Shame is used to punish and educate inappropriate commenters, elicit emotional accountability, provoke audience negotiation of community norms, and support creators' impression management goals. Our findings shed light on the benefits, precarities, and risks of using public shaming as a tool for norm enforcement. We contribute to HCI research by informing the design of user-centered tools for addressing content-based harm.