The coronavirus is forcing tech giants to make a risky bet on AI

Today, let’s talk about some of the front-line workers at Facebook and Google working on the pandemic: the content moderators who keep the site running day in and day out. Like most stories about content moderators, it’s a tale about difficult tradeoffs. And actions taken over the past few days by Facebook and YouTube will have significant implications for the future of the business.

First, though, some history.

At first, content moderation on social networks was a business problem: let in the nudity and the Nazis, and the community collapses. Later, it was a legal and regulatory problem: despite the protections afforded by Section 230, companies have a legal obligation to remove terrorist propaganda, child abuse imagery, and other forms...

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