## Content These are my speaker notes from a session on Content Moderation at Takshashila's Academic Conference on 18th February 2023. ### Who am I? Today: Policy Director at the Internet Freedom Foundation Not so long ago: Researcher at Takshashila A long long time ago: Product Manager / Technical Consultant - Technology Policy Issues in India - Information Ecosystem: *[The Information Ecologist](https://techpolicy.substack.com)* ### Resources 45 minutes is not even enough to barely not even scratch the surface on a subject like content moderation because of the amount interest there has been, esp. in the last few years. - Papers: 1) Jack Balkin - Free Speech is a triangle 2) Kate Klonick - The New Governors 3) Evelyn Douek - Content Moderation as Systems Thinking - People whose work you might generally want to follow: Daphne Keller, Whitney Phillips, Chinmayi Arun, Akriti Gaur. - If you don't want something too academic-y: - Mike Masnick at TechDirt - Everything in Moderation - Books 1) Tarleton Gillespie - Custodians of the Internet 2) Sarah T. Roberts - Behind the Screen 3) Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism - Institutions - Trust and Safety Professionals Association - Digital Trust and Safety Partnership - Integrity Institute ### What is Content Moderation? - A Theoretical Defintion (*[source](https://www.tspa.org/curriculum/ts-fundamentals/content-moderation-and-operations/what-is-content-moderation/)*) - > Content moderation is the process of reviewing online [user-generated content](https://www.tspa.org/curriculum/ts-curriculum/glossary/#UGC) for compliance against a digital platform’s policies regarding what is and what is not allowed to be shared on their platform. These policies are often known as _[community standards](https://www.tspa.org/curriculum/ts-curriculum/glossary/#community-standards)_. The process of moderating content and enforcing [policy](https://www.tspa.org/curriculum/ts-curriculum/glossary/#policy) is either done manually by people or through automation, or a combination of both, depending on the scale and maturity of the abuse and of a platform’s operations. ### Models ![[Pasted image 20230218134457.png]] *[source](https://www.tspa.org/curriculum/ts-fundamentals/policy/policy-models/)* ### Process Flow ![[Pasted image 20230218140622.png]] *([source](https://www.tspa.org/curriculum/ts-fundamentals/content-moderation-and-operations/what-is-content-moderation/))* ##### Possible outcomes: **More than just leave up/take down content** - Content deletion - Banning - Temporary suspension - Feature blocking - Reduced visibility - Labeling/Flaggin - [demonetization](https://www.tspa.org/curriculum/ts-curriculum/glossary/#demonetization) (Notice the Z, so this is clearly not the November 2016 variety) - withholding payments - referral to law enforcement. #### Takeaway(s) - This is so simple, why are we even having this session? What's all the fuss about? ### Some truisms - The essence of what platforms do - Tarleton Gillespie - Does Gmail *moderate* content? - If you disagree - what do you think happens to spam? - Side quest: Find a standard definition for spam. - - Masnick's Impossibility Theorem: Content moderation at scale is impossible to do well ([link](https://www.techdirt.com/2019/11/20/masnicks-impossibility-theorem-content-moderation-scale-is-impossible-to-do-well/)) - Someone will always be the receiving end of a decision - In other words: Someone's content moderation is somebody else's censorship. - Subjective - Scale is often underestimated - Content moderation at scale is error choice - Evelyn Douek (paraphrased) [Twitter Search](https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aevelyndouek%20content%20moderation%20error&src=typed_query&f=top) - - Everything is a content moderation problem - Evelyn Douek, and lots of people (maybe) - Spam reviews on Zomato? - Search suggestions on Amazon? - ![[Pasted image 20210930173642.png|300]] ### Who moderates and where? #### I thought it was only sites with user generated content? - Payment Gateways? - Recommended Reading: [The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks | Jillian C York | The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/28/onlyfans-scandal-platforms-banks-ban-sexual-content-sex-workers) - Cloud Services / CDNs? - Cloudflare - DailyStormer, Infowars, Kiwifarms - AWS - Parler - Recommended Reading: [OII | The Internet’s Reluctant Sheriffs: Content moderation and political gatekeeping through Internet infrastructure](https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news-events/videos/the-internets-reluctant-sheriffs-content-moderation-and-political-gatekeeping-through-internet-infrastructure/) - ISPs / DNS services? - Recommended Reading: [Texas abortion ‘whistleblower’ website forced offline | US news | The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/07/texas-abortion-whistleblower-website-forced-offline) - App Stores? - All the time, they just call it App Store Policy or something like that #### Are there any frameworks? [](https://i0.wp.com/stratechery.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Stratechery-2019-08-07-20.42.32.png?ssl=1) *[(source)](https://stratechery.com/2019/a-framework-for-moderation/)* ![[Pasted image 20230218144551.png]] *[(source)](https://www.cigionline.org/articles/navigating-tech-stack-when-where-and-how-should-we-moderate-content/)* ### Do we want more? - Power / Discretion - Content Cartels - Malign Creativity - Cannot ignore adversarial dynamics - ![[An online conflict.png|2500]] ### Takeaway(s) - Everything is *not just* a content moderation problem. - And it is certainly not just a technology problem - We are not going to "proactively content moderate" our way to utopia - Moderate your expections (see what I did there?) ### Miles to go... The challenges are complex, exciting, scary and deep, But I have time limits to keep - Working conditions - Local context/nuance - Resources invested - Individual content decisions don't necessarily translate to aggregate change - Specifics of recommender systems - ... we could do an entire course. ## Colophon %% title:: Content Moderation Session - 2023-02-18 type:: [[output]] tags:: url:: file:: creator:: Prateek Waghre %% created:: [[2023-02-18]]