Moderation Readings

[Frijol]

To be facilitated by @frijol and @RangerMauve. Schedule for 2020 semester here: https://github.com/datatogether/reading_datatogether/issues/71

This topic covers factors that impact the content that we see. How do platforms balance freedom of expression versus consent to avoid offensive content, navigate algorithmic versus human moderation and curation, or incentivize different types of interaction? What are downstream effects of these choices?

We use these issues to solicit additional reading suggestions from the community. Please add suggestions below! Ultimately, the facilitators will choose the reading selections for their session.

Here are some readings that were suggested for this topic in the Data Together Annual Meeting:

• Short piece on moderation for Something Awful: https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/26/18744264/something-awful-youtube-moderation-rich-kyanka-lgbtq
• Moderation for Facebook: https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/19/18681845/facebook-moderator-interviews-video-trauma-ptsd-cognizant-tampa
• Instructables, do they have any writing about their moderation style vs e.g. hackaday for the same purpose?
• "Free speech" both real and as a framing device

-- Maybe goes in here: Is Open source a gift economy or a barter system?

• How do economic forces shape what technical resources are built & shared. The structural advantages of being a maintainer?
• Incentives for opening. Docker as an interesting use case
• Maybe “token economy” book https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48219912-token-economy
• This thread on SSB including:
• Christian Bundy: https://viewer.scuttlebot.io/%256a2FQ4J1aCwVGyU2ROQPXfsyrZQhsa2tQ9nJYg262Qk%3D.sha256
• Substack tweet exchange: https://viewer.scuttlebot.io/%25BuTtZihbQ1Ffn5bV20E8oBic2OvzMzFkdGvlxJJhmIQ%3D.sha256
• Kelsey: https://viewer.scuttlebot.io/%25LtCFpMuVEmnPHwR24R%2Fye67mhUepIN8dnor1CXfYveA%3D.sha256 and https://viewer.scuttlebot.io/%25Apkub6c3nqnkGFXy9dYD9z5iOVNY%2BkfJa%2FUeVnX9YF4%3D.sha256
• Rico: https://onezero.medium.com/the-internet-relies-on-people-working-for-free-a79104a68bcc

-- Maybe goes in here: UX and the dweb

• Usability of dweb tech and applications
• Dark patterns of tech: https://www.darkpatterns.org/
• Human Centred Design Considered Harmful: https://www.jussipasanen.com/human-centred-design-considered-harmful/?utm_source=hackernewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=design

[Frijol]

Maybe goes in here: information maintenance as a practice of care

• https://zenodo.org/record/3251131
• https://osf.io/af9hz/
• https://www.diglib.org/groups/dlf-working-group-on-labor-in-digital-libraries/

[Frijol]

Some ideas in https://dataresponsibly.github.io/courses/spring19/

[Frijol]

Started taking a look at this today!

Some themes that have emerged:

• Incentives & disincentives – for mods, admins, and community members around acting in good faith with the community & network
  • Something Awful requires you to pay to make an account in order to reduce repeat offenses
• Automatic vs human moderation and control
  • Something Awful: you need humans in order to moderate well
  • Bodies in Seats: ...but then humans have to look at these horrible things (+ the bonus reading: is there any way to make this job not horrible?)
• The absolute power of the platform owner
  • The importance of it for content moderators to be able to keep community "in good faith"
  • The incredible downstream effects on individuals, see the Naomi Wu piece
• Manipulation of humans through platforms – "soft" control vs "hard" rules
  • Human centred design piece re how the only humans under consideration are those who are paying (and it's not in their best interests either)
• Drawing the boundaries: what is your (polity) community?

Readings I'd nominate for our selection:

• Bijan Stephen for The Verge: "Something Awful's Founder Thinks Youtube Sucks at Moderation" - strategies for moderation from Something Awful's founder
• Casey Newton for The Verge: "Bodies in Seats" - around outsourced content moderation & its impacts on the humans who have to view & judge the content. Would recommend:
  • From the beginning to "But for the first time, three former moderators for Facebook in North America agreed to break their nondisclosure agreements and discuss working conditions at the site on the record."
  • WOULD NOT recommend the middle of the article for this group– it's good reporting but needs a content warning for graphic descriptions (and the intro gets the points across)
  • For bonus reading, I'd recommend from "Last week, I visited the Tampa site with a photographer." to the end, interesting additional perspective re trying to figure out how this stuff should be done
• Jussi Passanen: "Human centred design considered harmful" – how good design principles applied to business sense can be harmful for humans in the context of a livable planet. Not 100% sure this piece belongs in our month. It's a very good piece, depends on if our scope includes practices of customer manipulation

Bonus reading

• Naomi Wu's experience with media manipulation & being "content moderated" off of several funding platforms she had used to make a living: part 1 and part 2 – this is very interesting and topical but too long to include in the required reading
• Flame Warriors, if you'd like a lighter take, is a tongue-in-cheek characterization of the various types of people moderators encounter

Notes thus far:

• Something Awful:
  • Says moderation takes three things: admins, mods, sense of humor
  • Also lists a different set of 3: make it easy to moderate with good software, make rules everyone know, and source the right moderators (ideally from the community)
  • Terms of service: "We can ban you for anything we like" (in addition to the usual "don't do x, y, z") – a boon to admins and mods for people who are trying to find rule loopholes
  • Disincentives for the banned to pop back up: $10 to make an account
  • They intentionally make examples of users doing stuff that's absolutely not allowed Mods
  • "You have to know what kind of person you want on your platform" in order to moderate it effectively

Other readings I'd like to look into (in addition to all the other links I haven't looked at yet):

• Dark Patterns on how people get manipulated by design decisions
• Maybe something around the punching of Richard Spencer
• Maybe something around protests against speakers at universities
• More stuff by Casey Newton, who regularly writes about content moderators' perspectives?
• Something on how e.g. promoted tweets and google ads are chosen for specific users
• Maybe something on the banning of "political" content from Twitter

[Frijol]

Here's my updated proposal (hoping to finalize this week so there's lots of time for people to read before the reading group!)

Overall, I'm interested in creating a discussion around what factors influence what it is we see, as moderated through various Internet entities (an increasing percentage of our overall information intake).

Readings

• Bijan Stephen for The Verge: "Something Awful's Founder Thinks Youtube Sucks at Moderation" (2019) - strategies for moderation from Something Awful's founder
• Casey Newton for The Verge: "Bodies in Seats" (2019) - around outsourced content moderation & its impacts on the humans who have to view & judge the content. Would recommend:
  • From the beginning to "But for the first time, three former moderators for Facebook in North America agreed to break their nondisclosure agreements and discuss working conditions at the site on the record."
  • NOT RECOMMENDED: the middle of the article for this group– it's good reporting but needs a content warning for graphic descriptions (and the intro gets the points across)
• Jussi Passanen: "Human centred design considered harmful" – how good design principles applied to business sense can be harmful for humans, especially in the context of a livable planet
• Choose one of the following (their lengths vary):
  • Mark Scott for Politico EU: "Why Banning Political Ads on Social Media Misses the Point" (2019) - argues that beginning to moderate content for advertising is the beginning of social media companies taking ownership/responsibility over user content generally
  • Niam Yaraghi for Brookings: "Twitter's Ban on Political Advertisements Hurts Our Democracy" (2020) - discusses the unequal impact of the ban on more vs less-well funded political groups and pushes for more detailed transparency measures
  • Kate Conger for the New York Times: "Twitter Will Ban All Political Ads, C.E.O. Jack Dorsey Says" (2019) – contrasted with the Facebook hands-off approach and Google's selective approach
• Choose one of the following (their lengths vary):
  • Clint Pumphrey for HowStuffWorks: "How Do Advertisers Show Me Custom Ads?" (2012) – cookies and retargeting, notice tone
  • Cade Metz for the New York Times: "How Facebook's Ad System Works" (2017) – targeting factors that Facebook uses for ads, the inception of ads into a content stream, some treatment of the Russia issue
  • Cole Nemeth for Sprout Social: "How the Twitter Algorithm Works in 2020" (2020) before "How to turn off the Twitter algorithm" – a really short one just highlighting the factors involved
  • Will Oremus for Slate: "Twitter's New Order" (2017) – much more in depth (not just how but why and future directions) but pretty long
  • Josh Constine for TechCrunch: "How Facebook News Feed Works" (2016) before "An Updated List Of News Feed Algorithm Changes"

Bonus reading

• Naomi Wu's experience with media manipulation & being "content moderated" off of several funding platforms she had used to make a living: part 1 and part 2 – this is very interesting and topical but too long to include in the required reading
• Flame Warriors, if you'd like a lighter take, is a tongue-in-cheek characterization of the various types of people moderators encounter
• The end of the Casey Newton "Bodies in Seats" article, from "Last week, I visited the Tampa site with a photographer." to the end, interesting additional perspective re trying to figure out how this stuff should be done

[Frijol]

More reading suggestions that came up in the discussion (in case we revisit):

• Words that Wound
• Lisa Nakamura
• James Bridle
• The Wealth of Networks