A free and open Internet: Our utopian fantasy or dystopian nightmare?
Gillespie’s ‘Custodians of The Internet’ (2018) reports on the procedures put in place to remove harmful online content. Gillespie presents an overview of content moderation on social media platforms and explores why they are enforced. A world wide web with no content moderation would have a wide range of consequences on the public, such as negative psychological impacts, exposure to terrorism or explicit content amongst others.
What do we as a society expect of content moderation?
Tarleton Gillespie pulls back the curtain to expose how platforms have had to accumulate their own individual strategies to regulate the internets online discourse. One of the examples used was Nick Ut’s 1972 Pulitzer prize winning photo titled “Terror of War”.
The unforgettable depiction referencing the terrors of the Vietnam War blurred the lines between the public’s interest of warfare and the inappropriate nature of a young naked nine year old girl in distress. This powerful image of war was shown in a post by journalist Tom Egeland and later was removed by Facebook and Egeland got suspended.
The photo presented was of graphic nature and depicted the ethical issue of young nudity. Regardless, the photo was deemed culturally significant for demonstrating the atrocities of the Vietnam War. Facebook’s choice to get rid of the image led to outrage and news outlets promoting “Dear Mark Zuckerberg” content. The complexity in deciding if a photograph was of global historical significance or possibly offensive is inevitably a difficult one.
The regulation of illegal content on social media platforms requires a range of algorithmic statistics and computer science. The governance of platforms can be difficult to inspect as major technological developments continue to grow. Gorwa, Binns and Katzenback (2020) examine the workings of algorithmic moderation and found that even impeccable analytics in toxic speech identification will hold bias to whether it should be removed or not. Inevitably, algorithms will not be able to defend the technological landscape from some user-generated content and it can remove content deemed as a morally justified (such as Nick Ut’s photograph).
The scale which formulates what categorises as offensive content will not always compliment an individual’s moral compass. Some content might slip under the algorithmic radar. For example, the 2018 YouTube video release by blogger Logan Paul in Aokigahara (a Japanese forest known for suicides). The video displayed controversial footage displaying the body of a dead person. The now deleted material was viewed by millions before being taken down by YouTube themselves.
To conclude, platforms have taken custody of what content is present on their internet sites. Some content will be deemed more misguided and inappropriate than others. The level of harm a piece of content can have is subjective from person to person, without moderation, a vulnerable individual could be psychologically influenced or damaged through explicit and inappropriate exposures.
Would you trust a world where the internet has no content moderation?
References:
- Gillespie, T. (2018). All Platforms Moderate. In Custodians of the Internet : Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions The Shape Social Media (pp. 1–23). Yale University Press.
- Gorwa, R., Binns, R., & Katzenbach, C. (2020). Algorithmic content moderation: Technical and political challenges in the automation of platform governance. Big Data and Society, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951719897945
- Griffin, A. (2018). LOGAN PAUL VIDEO: WHAT DID CONTROVERSIAL FOOTAGE SHOW AND WHAT IS AOKIGAHARA, THE JAPANESE ‘SUICIDE FOREST’? Retrieved December 27, 2020, from Independent website: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/logan-paul-video-what-aokigahara-suicide-forest-show-youtube-post-dead-body-latest-news-a8137561.html
- TIME. (n.d.). Terror of War: Nick Ut (1972). Retrieved December 28, 2020, from 100 Photos website: http://100photos.time.com/photos/nick-ut-terror-war
