An old post about moderation

 I've been going through the laborious process of saving off posts on AFF (my count has gone from 1890 to 1765 - woo hoo).

Today I stumbled across this post from 2014 - I would love to re-post it there, but of course there's no way it would get approved by the reviewers of today.  So here you go...

Who's Minding the Store?

There have been a number of posts recently talking about how so many people (ok let's call it as it is - MEN) don't follow norms of respectful behavior on AFF.

I heard a fascinating podcast story yesterday that tied in with this issue. First - a recommendation if you like listening to podcasts: check out Snap Judgement. It's a similar format to This American Life - three or four different stories around a selected theme - but the host, Glynn Washington, is like the anti-Ira Glass. Don't get me wrong, Ira Glass is my uber-crush - I go in for that nerdy Jewish intellectual type. Washington's delivery is completely different, but really entertaining.

Back to the story. It was an interview with a man who landed a job with a large online social network (it wasn't named in the interview, they gave it a pseudonym, Rumbleface). His job was to review photos/videos/posts that were in violation of the site's terms of use. Rumbleface had a computer program that crawled user accounts and found images that had previously been reported on other accounts and found to be violations - but since artificial intelligence isn't perfect, this man's job was to review the computer program's findings and make a determination.

The example that was given was a video showing a naked toddler playing with a dog, and the dog jumps up and snaps at the boy's private parts. Even though it featured a erm, banned topic, users weren't posting it as child , they were posting it because they thought was funny. So in that instance, the video would be removed but the user account wouldn't be removed.

But he ended up seeing lots and lots of very disturbing stuff - and some of it he saw over and over again, because as images got shared around they would appear on multiple profiles and have to be removed. Images that were so disturbing that they persisted in his head, and gave him nightmares at night. images that might start to make a normal person start to lose faith in humanity - or at least, to obsess about the small sub-set of humanity that's truly evil.

He became frustrated with the limitations of his role - he was only allowed to remove images/accounts that had been flagged by the computer program. So he went "rogue", so to speak. "I would spend a few hours doing my designated job, and then I would take some time to go out on my own finding offensive accounts and deleting them. Child abuse? deleted. Dog fighting? deleted. Racist white supremacist? deleted. Diaper fetishist? deleted."

That was where I was caught up short. I've met someone who was a diaper fetishist, and his fetish, while weird, was harmless. The guy wouldn't hurt a fly. Of course I don't know what was on the account that the interviewee deleted - maybe there were offensive pictures, maybe things that weren't harmless. At any rate, that offhand comment gave me pause.

The company eventually caught on to what he was doing, and he was issued a reprimand, but surprisingly, not fired. However when his contract came up for renewal, he left the company, deciding that he couldn't take the job any more. But he couldn't let it go. Even after leaving the job, if he stumbled across offensive accounts on Rumbleface, he would email his former co-workers and ask them to investigate.

It even bled over into offline life. He talked about sitting at a sidewalk cafe, seeing two teenage girls walk by, and then noticing a middle aged man following them, pointing his camera phone at their asses. "I yelled, 'Hey! stop that!' and pointed my finger at him, like, 'I see you'". (I love that actually - wouldn't it be awesome if in a situation where a guy was cat calling at a woman in public, other men called him out on it?)

Anyway...how does all of this tie in with the lack of respect on AFF? Other bloggers have called for more regulation, more attention paid to reports of abuse, and in general I think that would be a good thing - but where does one draw the line between someone who's offensive and disrespectful, and someone who's socially awkward? How do you draw the line between an image that's genuinely offensive, versus one that might gross out "normal" people but be appealing to a small subset of fetishists? I'm not excusing the site for failing to regulate users - but I sure wouldn't want to be the one in charge of taking it on.

And I wondered if the offenders might possibly be motivated to change if they were able to see the constant stream of disrespect that's aimed at women here - like the guy in the interview who saw so many awful things that his awareness became heightened? (I'm thinking about the OKC model where there are users from the site who are volunteer moderators).

Meh - I'm probably being a naive Polyanna to think that anyone might be changed.

Some of the more interesting comments on that post:

1.

I don't think that there should be more censorship. This is an odd place and outside of illegal activities, people should feel free to express themselves here. If you don't like someone ... block them.

2.

I've participated in a lot of online, social, and professional communities. The best communities aren't driven by policies and enforcement, they're driven by precedent and cultural mores. So when you come into the community that is civil and productive and start behaving like an asshat, you're the outlier and won't have much of a voice. It's not unlike the broken window theory, but with people.

There's little incentive for the powers that be here to create such a friendly environment. Their bread and butter is tricking people into believing that they will get laid tonight. Thus, women are approached by these poor, gullible men and treated as if they will put out ASAP.

The solution wouldn't be enforcement but it would be different marketing and more priority on the otherwise-buries blogging and community outlets. Also, better blogging and commenting tools to build up a community's culture. But that would require a significant infrastructure investment and would probably interfere with profit.

I like the anonymity and the low stakes of expressing myself here, and when I was meeting people I found the honesty and directness refreshing. So I accept that I'm dealing with a microcosm here and don't waste my time worrying about people with different goals or approaches.

In all, I wish hints could change but I won't hold my breath. And I still get a lot out of things as they are.

3.

I'd like to see more better policing - and self policing (one can dream, eh/) - but, again, it's hard to know where the line gets drawn. With all the high school drama that goes on in here, there's the problem of malicious reporting as well...and, yes, it's a slippery slope.

BUT

the amount of misogyny here is staggering; the amount of outright abuse is staggering.

I remember reading of a mod on a site similar to RumbleFace who was overwhelmed with the actual physical abuse he (or she) ran across - people would be whinging on about the site not working, or changes, or whatever petty reality - and the moderator would be trying to track an account of an abused child so they could get police presence.

It's not unrelated, IMO.

4.

The thing about all these sites is that there's no constitutional protection for posting on a social network. They can set whatever terms they want to, and they don't have to have any procedures for banning anyone - especially the sites that don't charge. There are some legal limits - posting copyrighted material or material that defames a person - and other than that the sites can do whatever they want. It's up to the users to say, fuck it, we're not going to put up with this any more and either threaten to leave en masse (or just leave). By blogging here despite the emails we get, we condone the behavior.

However, I don't know about others' perceptions - mine is that blog commenting has become much more civil in general than it ever used to be. So maybe by refusing to tolerate it we have made a difference.