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.
