Intuitions about content moderation are misaligned with effective practices for reducing conspiracy beliefs

Given that the spread of false information online often outpaces efforts to address it, it is important to understand i) what content is the most important to remove to prevent false beliefs and ii) whether lay intuitions about content removal are aligned with these findings. In four experiments, participants viewed social media posts containing false evidence for novel conspiracy theories. In Experiment 1 (N = 300), removing posts containing plausible evidence significantly decreased participants'conspiracy belief, while removing posts containing implausible evidence did not. In Experiments 2a-2c (Ns = 350, 352, 351, respectively), we investigated new participants' moderation preferences for the same posts. Worryingly, participants chose to remove posts containing implausible evidence more often than posts containing plausible evidence (Exp. 2a-2b). And, even when oriented to the goal of reducing belief in the broader conspiracy theory, participants still removed both types of posts at similar rates (Exp. 2c). Our results suggest that relying on lay intuitions to guide content removal decisions may result in prioritizing the removal of content that does not substantively contribute to the spread of broader false beliefs over content that does. These findings have important implications for moderation efforts and highlight the need to look beyond belief in isolated claims when developing effective misinformation interventions.