Online intergroup hostility is a pervasive and troubling issue, yet experimental ev-
idence on how to curb it remains scarce. This study examines counterspeech as a
user-driven strategy to reduce hate speech. Drawing on theories that suggest adopting
the perspective of minority groups can reduce prejudice, we randomized four coun-
terspeech strategies across the senders of 2,102 xenophobic Twitter messages. Com-
pared to a passive control group, the three perspective-centered strategies—traditional
perspective-taking, analogical perspective-taking, and perspective getting—increased
the likelihood that the sender would delete their xenophobic message, reduced the
share of new xenophobic messages sent over the following four weeks, and decreased
other users’ amplification of the xenophobic message. Although differences between
the three strategies were not statistically significant, the results suggest that analogi-
cal perspective-taking—encouraging senders to compare their own experiences of being
attacked online with their discriminatory behavior toward outgroups—may have the
strongest effects. In contrast, disapproval messages had weaker effects. These findings
offer theoretical and actionable insights for reducing intergroup hostility and its online
amplification.