The platforms suck at content moderation and demanding they do more won't make them better at it -- but there ARE concrete ways to improve moderation

Concentration in the tech sector has left us with just a few gigantic online platforms, and they have turned into playgrounds for some of the worst people on earth: Nazis, misogynists, grifters, ultranationalists, trolls, genocidal mobs and more. The platforms are so big and their moderation policies are so screwed up, and their use of "engagement" algorithms to increase pageviews, that it's making many of us choose between having a social life with the people we care about and being tormented by awful people. Even if you opt out of social media, you can't opt out of being terrorized by psychopathic trolls who have been poisoned by Alex Jones and the like.

The platforms have completely failed to deal with this problem, and it's getting worse. But the "solutions" that many people I agree with on other issues are likely to make things worse, not better. Specifically, the platforms' inability to moderate bad speech will not be improved by making them do more of it -- it'll just make them more indiscriminate.

Remember, before the platforms knocked Alex Jones offline, they took down "Moroccan atheists, trans models, drag performers, indigenous women" and many others whose speech threatened and discomfited the rich and powerful, who were able to use the platforms' moderation policies to deny their adversaries access to online organizing and communications tools.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Jillian C York (an expert on moderation policies) and Corynne McSherry (EFF's legal director) have written the best article on content moderation I've read to date, in which they comprehensively identify the ways that current content moderation is broken, the ways that proposals to "fix moderation" (especially AI-based content filters) (uuuugghghghg) will make it worse, and then, finally, a set of proposals for genuinely improving moderation -- without sacrificing the speech and organizing capacity of marginalized and threatened people. Read the rest