Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Tag: social-media

  • Social Media Learning Curve

    This was written when Elon Musk first bought Twitter. It’s a great overview of why content moderation is so damn hard on the global web.

    It goes through (in detail) 20 phases that a social media site is likely to go through. The summary:

    Level One: “We’re the free speech platform! Anything goes!”
    Level Two: “We’re the free speech platform! But no CSAM!”
    Level Three: “We’re the free speech platform! But no CSAM and no infringement!”
    Level Four: “We’re the free speech platform without CSAM, infringement or hate speech!”
    Level Five: “We’re the free speech platform without CSAM, infringement, or hate speech, and we follow all laws!”
    Level Six: “We’re the free speech platform, without CSAM or hate speech, and who will take down infringing content, but not fair use content, and we follow all laws!”
    Level Seven: “We’re the free speech platform, doing our best to stop CSAM, hate speech, and infringement, and we follow all laws!”
    Level Eight: “We’re the free speech platform, doing our best to stop CSAM, hate speech, infringement and spam, and we follow all laws!”
    Level Nine: “We’re the trustworthy free speech platform, doing our best to stop CSAM, hate speech, infringement, and spam, and we follow all the laws!”
    Level Ten: “We’re the trustworthy free speech platform, doing our best to stop CSAM, hate speech, infringement, and spam, and we follow laws of democratic countries.”

    Level Eleven: “We’re the trustworthy mostly free speech platform, doing our best to stop CSAM, hate speech, infringement, spam, and genocide, and we’re working to hire more moderators to deal with foreign languages.”
    …
    Level Twenty: “Look, we’re just a freaking website. Can’t you people behave?”

    Read the whole thing, it’s good.

  • Now on Bluesky

    I’ve been a long time Twitter user (not using the other name). Musk taking it over did bad things to the overall experience, but since I’m largely a consumer of a tightly curated list of people, I didn’t notice it too much. Don’t spend time in the replies and never, ever go to the “For You” tab, and Twitter is pretty much as good as it ever was.

    Until the people you follow leave. I don’t get replies from white supremacists, but when the folks I want to follow finally say “enough”, I notice. At first it was just a few, and they went a few different places. Mastodon and Threads seemed like possible contenders in the early days of Musk/Twitter.

    But lately, Bluesky gained momentum, and since the election it’s been an avalanche of people leaving Twitter for Bluesky (or at least posting primarily there). Sports is still better on Twitter, but politics has moved over. I’ll probably still spend time on Twitter, but these days I go to Bluesky first.

    I don’t post much, but I’m fish1964 pretty much everywhere. And starting with this post, I will be cross posting on Bluesky (assuming it works).