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.
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.
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.
@dansinker @caseynewton That was disturbing... great articles.
There must be a better solution than more policing. But, I guess that's age-old: how does a society enforce its morality norms?
This platform, besides being distributed, by design seeks to remove profit motive. Does that help? It's not enough, certainly.
And is there a name for this social phenomenon of knowing what's behind the scenes? The old "you don't want to watch the sausage being made" situations?
Lots to think about.
@georgewherbert @pinsk @dansinker @billrehm
@molly0xfff, this feels like a âscaling volunteersâ problem similar to Wikipedia, which has itâs faults but has been overall amazingly successful at creating and maintaining the largest store of human knowledge in historyâall with volunteers.
Do you think thatâs right, and do you think that a model like that is likely to emerge in the Fediverse?
Wikipedia as an organization culture is pretty damn white, male, abled and US centric, though. For example, a stub I wrote on the European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group (ENSREG) was voted "not notable enough" and deleted in the 2010s. Yes I am still salty, no I haven't edited Wikipedia since, and ENSREG still doesn't have an English Wikipedia article.
Not notable???
https://www.ensreg.eu/members-glance
ENSREG is an independent expert advisory group, in which all EU Member States are represented by senior officials from their national regulatory authorities or nuclear safety authorities. Senior representatives of the European Commission are also part of the group. In addition, Council of the European Union, Switzerland, Norway, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, have
How about an option in between? Allow up to 10â20 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.
â@jproulx The legal and technical barriers to T&S adequacy in a federated social universe are already insurmountable, now let's throw in the ethical one where you need an army of humans to manually review horrific shit that the algorithms missed. It's a PTSD toxic waste plant.â
@dansinker I was thinking about this the other day. It seems like anything that's words (micro-to-whole-number aggressions) might be amenable to community policing and consensus rules, but the nightmare fuel images and legally toxic stuff (e.g., CSAM), that seems like professionals must be paid to handle it, and in some cases, to involve law enforcement.
Technical categories, like porn, nudes, profanity, some copyright, volunteers could do that, too.
@dansinker
Some of the recent moderation kerfuffles might seem overdone, but as Deputy Fife said:
@dansinker in other words, we should all make some financial contribution to our federated infrastructure providers.
I'd be happy to pay $8/month as long as I don't get stigmatized by a blue checkmark or some stupid shit like that.
Having a healthy community without sponsored content is good enough for me.
If you don't already, you should follow @dansinker
He lives two weeks in the future, and following him has helped me understand when I get there.
From July 2011,
@anildash's wise counsel :
"You should make a budget that supports having a good community,
... Every single person whoâs going to object to these ideas is going to talk about how they canât afford to hire a community manager,
Or how itâs so expensive to develop good tools for managing comments.
Okay,
Then save money by turning off your web server.
Or enjoy your city where you presumably donât want to pay for police because theyâre so expensive."
https://anildash.com/2011/07/20/if_your_websites_full_of_assholes_its_your_fault-2/
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