There's A LOT of discussion about content moderation right now and very little of it touches on the fact that we've all lived on the big social sites for the last decade-plus thanks to the massively exploitated labor of mostly-invisible moderation workers. The social web at scale wouldn't have happened without these laborers, who in addition to shit wages, have been exposed to literally every imaginable horror.

If we're remaking this world, let's do better on that front.

Anyway, as you hear about fuckups on moderation and poor decisions by a handful of volunteer mods on servers that have grown by hundreds of thousands of users in a week, keep that in mind.

Finally, the very best coverage of this issue has been from @caseynewton at The Verge whose very haunting stories have stuck with me for years now.

They are worth reading and really thinking about what *waves hands in all directions* really means in terms of the actual human lives at the bottom of all this.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona

https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/19/18681845/facebook-moderator-interviews-video-trauma-ptsd-cognizant-tampa

The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America

In a damning new report, Casey Newton gives an unprecedented look at the day-to-day lives of Facebook moderators in America. His interviews with twelve current and former employees of Cognizant in Arizona reveal a workplace perpetually teetering on the brink of chaos.

The Verge
@dansinker @caseynewton this actually makes me wonder if I really should open up my own instance to others.
Besides to suddenly have to moderate content on your server, owners and operators of instances probably also become liable for content.
Maybe the smartest thing (albeit expensive as per cost per user) would be to stay on your private instance or join a well moderated one (with all risks on the owner).
We’re probably about to become mini Twitters πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”

@sven

How about an option in between? Allow up to 10–20 well-trusted people on your server, and then block any further registrations. It's small enough that DMs or email threads should be efficient for any needed moderation, especially once you get to know each other enough.

@dansinker @caseynewton

@boud @dansinker @caseynewton This would be probably a good recipe to get an instance started, ie. with a reasonably sized group of people whom you already know or who got invited by people who share similar values with you.
@dansinker @sven @boud @caseynewton yeah I would say if you're wondering whether you should open your instance up to a wider group of people, the answer is probably no