Anchor Change with Katie Harbath

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So you think you can moderate content?

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So you think you can moderate content?

Backseat quarterbacking is easy; proposing solutions/doing the work is harder

Katie Harbath
Dec 11, 2022
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So you think you can moderate content?

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During COVID, I picked back up a ritual I used to have when I first moved to DC. I started getting the Sunday paper copies of the New York Times and the Washington Post. I’d brew up some coffee and take some time to leisurely go through the paper before getting on with my day.

This morning I got through one story - about how apparently sea slugs are the key to humans finding civil discourse - and then found myself going to Twitter to read the rest of the third installment of the Twitter files that took an agonizingly long time to post last night.

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And then I had to remind myself not to take the bait. 

I’m going to have things to say about these files. Between this and the Oversight Board cross-check decision, people are getting even more of a look at how the content moderation sausage is made at these platforms. There’s a right way to provide this kind of transparency, though. As Steven Levy points out in his column, Musk is making Mark Zuckerberg look smart. 

The way Musk is doing this by putting former employees - especially Yoel Roth - in danger is reckless. No employee deserves this. And before you sit there and say that he deserved it or it can’t be that bad - trust me, it’s bad. I’ve been on the receiving end of Internet trolls a few times. It sucks - and I’m not getting it nearly as badly as others are. 

I know I have folks on the right who read this and believe what Twitter, Facebook, and the other platforms did was wrong. That they do censor too much. That they did succumb to the working of the refs by Democrats or the government. That’s a perfectly fine position to take. We can debate about mistakes that were made - we all admit that they were - and we can debate about the right structure and transparency that should be put in place around these decisions, but we don’t have to do so while harassing the people who were trying to do the right thing. So, I beg of you. If you are in a position to redact employees' names on documents - please do so.

One of my favorite discussion sessions this semester at Georgetown was after I had the students write a policy on political ads. I then asked them to moderate content against those policies. I purposely brought up edge cases that I knew had stumped me and others at the company. They quickly realized the gaps. I often tell people that you can have quality, speed, or transparency with content moderation, but you can rarely have it all at once. I’m going to steal from Yoel one of the quotes that were leaked because this perfectly describes what my time at Facebook post-December 2015ish started to feel like, “we ran into the world changing faster than we were able to either adapt the product or the policy.”

So, if you are reading all of this Twitter file stuff or just hearing about it on the news and are thinking to yourself that this job can’t be that hard, I encourage you to take a few of the quizzes that are online based on leaked content moderation docs. These are from 2017 and 2018, respectively, but I think they still fit the bill. (Warning: There are some graphic images) There’s this one from the Guardian and this one from PBS.

While taking some of these, you'll notice that sometimes the moderators - or the technology - got it wrong, and Facebook reversed the decision. Mistakes do happen, and we’re never going to get to a spot of 100 percent accuracy because everyone will never agree on where the lines should be drawn, let alone is the technology good enough to get it always right. Oh, and humans are humans and make mistakes. 

Ok, I guess I’ve taken the bait from these files this morning, but before I got back to my New York Times, I felt the urge to pull out my laptop and write this newsletter to get it out of my system. I can only hope (though I know it’s likely futile) that after we’re all done being outraged, we can start having productive conversations on how this should all work.

Sadly, I’m asking for a holiday miracle that not even Santa can bring me.

What I’m Reading

  • TechCrunch: Cinder’s content moderation software is custom-built for trust and safety teams 

  • Washington Post: Wordle is Google's top search term in 2022, above Ukraine and the queen

  • TechDirt: Hello! You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Twitter And Hunter Biden’s Laptop

  • Daily Beast: Musk’s Twitter Has a Huge Blindspot—and It Could Be Deadly 

  • Washington Post: Russian disinformation aims to turn Germany against Ukrainian refugees 

  • danah boyd: What if failure is the plan?

  • Alan Alda Podcast: Kate Klonick: Can Social Media Not Be So Anti-Social?

Think Tanks/Academics/Other

  • Pew Research Center: Social Media Seen as Mostly Good for Democracy Across Many Nations, But U.S. is a Major Outlier 

  • Atlantic Council: Task Force for a Trustworthy Future Web

  • University of North Carolina: The State of State Platform Regulation

  • Morra Aarons-Mele: The Anxious Achiever: Turn Your Biggest Fears into Your Leadership Superpower (Available for pre-order!)

  • UW-Madison: Breaking Precedent: Journalism Ethics & Covering the U.S. Supreme Court 

  • Center for Democracy and Technology: CDT's 2022 Future of Speech Online: The Supreme Court’s Pivotal Term (Day 1) 

  • NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence: A Capability Definition and Assessment Framework for Countering Disinformation, Information Influence, and Foreign Interference

  • SCOTUS: Gonzalez Amicus Briefs

  • Global Analytics: Report: Authoritarians on a Media Offensive in the Midst of War 

  • ENISA: Foreign Information Manipulation Interference (FIMI) and Cybersecurity - Threat Landscape

Companies

  • Google: Year in Search 2022: All about new possibilities 

Jobs

  • Open_Future: Fellowship 2023

  • Oversight Board: Global Engagement Officer (Fixed Term)

  • Freedom House: Jobs 

  • Grammarly: Openings | Grammarly Careers 

  • Graphika: Staff Engineer

  • Graphika: Editor & Insights Manager

  • Discord: Sr. Platform Policy Specialist, Revenue

  • Discord: Sr. Product Policy Specialist, Revenue

  • Medtronic: Jobs in November, 2022 (Hiring Now!) 

  • Ballotpedia: Director of External Relations (Remote)

  • European Commission: Job opportunity: European Commission is hiring experts to enforce the Digital Services Act 

  • Reddit: Sr Manager, Platform Trust 

  • Global Cyber Alliance: Careers at GCA. Join Our Team. 

  • Institute for Rebooting Social Media: Call for 2023-2024 RSM Visiting Scholars

  • Koch Industries: Communications Manager

  • European Commission: Job opportunity: European Commission is hiring experts to enforce the Digital Services Act 

  • No Labels: Sr. Fundraiser

  • Arnold Ventures: Director of Advocacy, Criminal Justice

  • McCain Institute: Social Media Manager, Digital Communications 

  • National Alliance of Forest Owners: Director for Communications

  • Woodberry Associates: Senior Associate, Advocacy Management 

  • Bipartisan Policy Center: Project Assistant, Campus Free Expression Project

  • Duco offers paid project-based gigs to policy, security, and trust & safety professionals. Duco’s mission is to empower leading companies to operate safely, securely, and responsibly by mobilizing the world’s leading experts to help solve complex challenges. Duco HQ works with companies to scope projects, then matches leading policy, security, and trust & safety experts with paid-project work. Projects include reports, executive briefings, risk assessments, strategic advising, on-platform or cross-platform content review/labeling, etc. You can sign up with Duco here, and reach out to Sofi Arimany at sofia@ducoexperts.com if you have questions.

  • Duco: Fellow

  • YouTube: Program Manager, Transparency Reports, YouTube

  • Layoffs.fyi 

  • Center for Humane Technology: Chief of Staff 

  • Center for Humane Technology: Executive Producer, Your Undivided Attention

  • Center for Humane Technology: Development Director 

  • Omidyar: Senior Manager, Strategic Communications (Responsible Technology)

  • MetaMates Talent Directory 

  • Form: Tech industry resume book for people affected by layoffs

  • Tech Jobs for Good 

Calendar

  • Topics to keep an eye on that have a general timeframe of the first half of the year:

    • Facebook 2020 election research (Still happening! Watch the panel with the academics involved at the Knight Informed Conference)

    • Senate & House hearings, markups, and potential votes

    • Second Summit of Democracy (Announced! March 29-30, 2023)

  • November 28-30 - Knight Foundation: INFORMED: Conversations on Democracy in the Digital Age (Only virtual seats available)

  • November 2022 - Fiji Election

  • December 6, 2022 - BPC 2022 Election Summit

  • December 7, 2022  - Atlantic Council/DFR Lab StratCom

  • December 17, 2022 - Tunisia Election

  • Week of Dec 19 - Jan 6 committee report

  • 2022 TBD - Libya Election

  • January 2023 - Czech Republic Election

  • January 7: Meta/Trump Decision

  • January 16-20: Davos - World Economic Forum

  • February 5, 2023 - Cyprus Election

  • February 16, 2023 - Platforms have to announce EU numbers to comply with DSA

  • February 23, 2023 - Nigeria Election

  • Feb 23, 2023 - Meta response to cross check due

  • February 2023 - Djibouti Election

  • February 2023 - Monaco Election

  • March 5, 2023 - Estonia Election

  • March 10 - 19: SXSW

  • March 20 - 24, 2023: Mozilla Fest

  • March 29 - 30, 2023: Summit for Democracy

  • March 2023 - Antigua and Barbuda Election

  • March 2023 - Federated States of Micronesia Election

  • March 2023 - Guinea Bissau Election

  • March 2023 - Sierra Leone Election

  • April 30, 2023 - Benin Election

  • April 30, 2023 - Paraguay Election

  • April 2023 - Andorra Election

  • April 2023 - Finland Election

  • April 2023 - Montenegro Election

  • May 7, 2023 - Thailand Election

  • May 15-16: Copenhagen Democracy Summit

  • June 5-9: RightsCon

  • June 25, 2023 - Guatemala Election

  • June 25, 2023 -Turkey Election

  • July 2023 - Cambodia Election

  • July 2023 - Timor-Leste Election

  • July 2023 - Zimbabwe Election

  • August 6, 2023 - Greece Election

  • August 2023 - Eswatini Election

  • September 2023 - Mauritania Election

  • October 10, 2023 - Liberia Election

  • October 12, 2023 - Pakistan Election

  • October 22, 2023 - Switzerland Election

  • October 2023 - Argentina Election

  • October 2023 - Luxembourg Election

  • October 2023 - Oman Election

  • November 12, 2023 - Poland Election

  • November 20, 2023 - Marshall Islands Election

  • November 29, 2023 - Ukraine Election

  • November 2023 - Bhutan Election

  • November 2023 - Gabon Election

  • November 2023 - Rwanda Election

  • December 10, 2023 - Spain Election

  • December 2023 - Bangladesh Election

  • December 2023 - Democratic Republic of the Congo Election

  • December 2023 - Togo Election

  • TBD - Belarus Election

  • TBD - Cuba Election

  • TBD - Equatorial Guinea Election

  • TBD - Gabon Election

  • TBD - Guinea Election

  • TBD - Madagascar Election

  • TBD - Maldives Election

  • TBD - Myanmar Election

  • TBD - Singapore Election

  • TBD - South Sudan Election - (Unlikely to happen)

  • TBD - Turkmenistan Election

  • TBD - Tuvalu 

  • TBD - Haiti 

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