So you think you can moderate content?
So you think you can moderate content?
Backseat quarterbacking is easy; proposing solutions/doing the work is harder
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.
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
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
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
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)
Form: Tech industry resume book for people affected by layoffs
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