From Toxicity to Conformity: Adaptive user behavior to social norms in Telegram communities

Toxic and antisocial user behavior on social media platforms has received considerable scholarly attention due to its detrimental effects on society. This study takes a holistic perspective on the phenomenon of online toxicity by investigating the impact of local community norms on toxic expression. By using six large-scale datasets, comprising over 500 million Telegram messages collected between 2015 and 2024, we analyze toxic user behavior across multiple chats and languages. We introduce a methodological framework that models user adaptation through a conformity index, capturing conformist, anti-conformist, and independent behavioral tendencies. Our findings show that most users tend to conform to local normative environments, adjusting their toxicity to match the toxicity levels of the chats in which they participate. These patterns are consistent across datasets and languages, suggesting that community norms and social influence play a decisive role in shaping user behavior online. Furthermore, we demonstrate that exposure to these norms, in terms of increased user participation in chats, is associated with a stronger tendency toward conformity with the surrounding social contexts. Collectively, these findings contribute to a deeper understanding of toxic online behavior and highlight the importance of contextualized approaches to content moderation.