The Balancing Act of Social Audio Facilitators: When Self-Promotion Overshadows Community Care

Voice-based social media platforms, such as X-Spaces, Discord, and Clubhouse have seen considerable growth in recent years. Such platforms enable attendees to have real-time, ephemeral interactions with each other. While prior research on these spaces has predominantly focused on moderating harms, our work seeks to understand foundational practices employed by hosts to proactively shape their discussion space— focusing on the facilitation aspect of moderation duties. Drawing on facilitation strategies we study these practices through three comprehensive studies using mixed-methods: survey of social-audio users, co-design interviews, and analyzing training sessions for hosts. Our findings reveal insights into the issues faced by users, current facilitation practices, opinions on technological solutions, and factors that could be responsible for some of the identified issues such as the available training for hosts. Our analysis shows that hosts themselves are often significant sources of issues due to practices such as focusing more on self-promotion than facilitating discussions. In addition, training sessions encourage behaviors that contribute to the negative perception of hosts. To help address these issues, we draw on outcomes from co-design interviews to guide the design of future tools to support hosts in facilitating social-audio spaces. Our findings provide insights that could help create a more positive experience for both hosts and attendees.