Moderation:
- is absolutely necessary
- cannot be automated
- doesn’t scale if done by humans
- is rife with ridiculous failure modes
- is philosophically intractible
I’m increasingly of the mind that content moderation is •the• central problem of the social Internet right now, and I’m not sure we have anything like a solution in sight.
From @sandofsky: https://mastodon.social/@sandofsky/113181384256449181
A lot of people — and a lot of money — want humans to interact at scales we’ve never interacted with each other before. There’s no historical precedent, none, for “anybody on the planet can send you a message at any time.”
Moderation of speech and behavior is an age-old problem, but we’ve at least had locality to keep in manageable up until the last 2-3 decades. We’re in completely uncharted territory here as a species.
This from @mathling is a good metaphor. And for some perspective on our current situation: consider how utterly out of reach a 20th-century water treatment plant would be for a medieval city. That’s how far away we are from really figuring this out — if not in centuries, then at least in technology and human process distance.
https://mastodon.social/@mathling/113182720688542148
@inthehands “… it should be clear that improvements in communication tend to divide mankind …” by Harold Innis in Changing Concepts of Time
Someone with a degree in communication science gave me that quote years ago when I was wondering what was wrong with people on social media.
Remember what happened when the printing press was invented, or radio became a commodity?
@mainec
Seems a bit of a self aggrandising take by the communication scientist to suppose these divisions didn't always exist.
To me it seems much more coherent with what I know about humans to say that communication allows for the discovery of pre-existing differences, and of course also of similarity.
@inthehands
@tobychev it wasn't his take but a quote from a book, so maybe that book's author is to blame. I only have a computer science background, so happy to learn more takes from other disciplines on the systems we've built for over thirty years and how they impact society.