Creating Group Rules with AI: Human-AI Collaboration in WhatsApp Moderation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Nayak, Gauri, Shahid, Farhana, Garimella, Kiran, Vashistha, Aditya
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Nayak, Gauri
Shahid, Farhana
Garimella, Kiran
Vashistha, Aditya
author_facet Nayak, Gauri
Shahid, Farhana
Garimella, Kiran
Vashistha, Aditya
contents WhatsApp is one of the most widely used messaging platforms globally, with billions of users sharing information in private groups. Yet, it offers little infrastructure to support moderation and group governance. In the absence of platform-level oversight, group admins bear the responsibility of governing group behavior. In this paper, we explore how WhatsApp group admins collaborate with AI tools to create, enforce, and maintain group rules. Drawing on a two-phase speculative design study with 20 admins in India, we examine how participants interacted with an AI assistant (Meta AI) to co-create rules and responded to a series of probes illustrating AI-assisted moderation features. Our findings show that while admins appreciated the AI's ability to surface overlooked rules and reduce their moderation burden, they were highly sensitive to issues of relational trust, data privacy, tone, and social context. We identify how group type and admin style shaped their willingness to delegate authority, and surface the limitations of current chatbot interfaces in supporting collaborative rule-making. We conclude with design implications for building moderation tools that center human judgment, relational nuance, contextual adaptability, and collective governance.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_12613
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Creating Group Rules with AI: Human-AI Collaboration in WhatsApp Moderation
Nayak, Gauri
Shahid, Farhana
Garimella, Kiran
Vashistha, Aditya
Human-Computer Interaction
Information Retrieval
F.2.2; H.5
WhatsApp is one of the most widely used messaging platforms globally, with billions of users sharing information in private groups. Yet, it offers little infrastructure to support moderation and group governance. In the absence of platform-level oversight, group admins bear the responsibility of governing group behavior. In this paper, we explore how WhatsApp group admins collaborate with AI tools to create, enforce, and maintain group rules. Drawing on a two-phase speculative design study with 20 admins in India, we examine how participants interacted with an AI assistant (Meta AI) to co-create rules and responded to a series of probes illustrating AI-assisted moderation features. Our findings show that while admins appreciated the AI's ability to surface overlooked rules and reduce their moderation burden, they were highly sensitive to issues of relational trust, data privacy, tone, and social context. We identify how group type and admin style shaped their willingness to delegate authority, and surface the limitations of current chatbot interfaces in supporting collaborative rule-making. We conclude with design implications for building moderation tools that center human judgment, relational nuance, contextual adaptability, and collective governance.
title Creating Group Rules with AI: Human-AI Collaboration in WhatsApp Moderation
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Information Retrieval
F.2.2; H.5
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.12613