
Your Speech, Their Rules: People Who Guard the Internet - bookofjoe
https://onezero.medium.com/your-speech-their-rules-meet-the-people-who-guard-the-internet-ab58fe6b9231
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gervase
I found this article to be surprisingly nuanced, at least compared to the pre-
conceived notions I expected. In general, I veer more towards the "free
speech" end of the spectrum, and this article helped to paint a picture of
what it's actually like on the ground.

With that being said, I think there is still a bit of naïveté in terms of
their self-perception, but that's to be expected with practically anyone in
any job. At a high level, these teams seem to serve as a sort of "immune
system" for the platform, protecting against the indirect, implied threat of
high-handed governmental regulation.

It seems like they're trying to thread the needle between "We're just a
platform, anyone can say anything." and "Users of our site can only say things
that the company itself would say." That process will naturally be guided not
only by concrete policies, but shifting social norms, the teams' evolving
experience and composition, the individual members' prejudices and biases, and
so on.

Therefore, it's not surprising that this might produce "false positives" when
the viewpoint spectrum of these teams doesn't align with the spectrums of
certain subgroups of their users. The best they can really do (without
abdicating responsibility and letting it percolate up to a higher level, like
gov't) is try to ensure their filter spectrum is as closely aligned to their
(desired?) userbase's as possible.

In general, an interesting article, and worth the read.

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tomatotomato37
I'm annoyed this was posted while I'm away from my home computer because I
actually have pastebin dumps of the internal communications between 4chan
moderators leaked during the 2014 chaos that could provide an interesting
contrast between the moderation strategies of the public squares of the
internet and the sewage systems of the internet.

Edit: I'm going to see if I can find the original pastebins on fireden and
post them before my edit window closes

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hackermailman
You mean the skype dumps?
[https://pastebin.com/8DY2Rzuw](https://pastebin.com/8DY2Rzuw)

Essentially their strategy was

a) dox the doxxers and hope to scare them off to other chans

b) wholesale ban everybody involved

c) evac and sell the site to somebody else, which moot did end up doing

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tomatotomato37
No, they were IRC dumps of the internal communication between moderators as
they did their job over the course of a few months. It was a _lot_ of content,
I think one of the reasons I saved it as 4 text files was because it was
overflowing notepad or something.

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hackermailman
Ah, probably this then which covers months of janitor logs from end of 2013
until 2015
[https://www.mediafire.com/download/iygnsl39bvtglza/%23janite...](https://www.mediafire.com/download/iygnsl39bvtglza/%23janiteam.rar)
About 220MB in size. That was posted on 8chan /irc/ which is solely 4chan
janitor log dumping hxxps://8ch.net/irc/index.html (due to 8ch pariah status,
do not go there from any work IP).

~~~
tomatotomato37
That's most likely it, and also explains why I had trouble finding it on the
regular archives. 220MB of text is a fuckton of random conversation to sift
through if we want to do any meta-analysis on moderating styles however. At
least it's a goldmine for serious researchers.

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ilaksh
There are a few basic problems for me. One is that these platforms are so all-
encompassing and monopolistic that they have essentially become large public
spaces. Yet they are censored by private for profit companies behind closed
doors.

The biggest issue for me is the political censorship. Political censorship is
harmful because it restricts political dissent.

And of course the people censoring political content don't think that they are
stifling political dissent. What happens is they see something that completely
contradicts their worldview and label it as "crazy".

The problem is that many people have been given a worldview in which any truly
unpalatable recent actions by their government are simply impossible. Or more
generally, narratives which contradict official propaganda are identified by
that worldview as "crazy". In other words, the censors, like most people in
society, have been trained not to overstep the thought-authority of the
government.

The reason this is an issue is because propaganda that serves a political
regime can compromise the overall internal security of a country and even
negatively impact global security. This is security as in life-or-death.

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forgottenpass
I don't really think this article is going to change the minds of anyone who
thinks they're just applying arbitrary cultural standard to paper over what
the hegemony finds icky. 'cause they are, and they admit as much.

Am I supposed to feel different about censorship by empathizing with a censor?
I don't like the TSA but I understand the guy patting me down at the airport
is just an agent of a system outside his control.

Also the dude that said it's not like being the censors form _1984_ is being
lied to, by himself.

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imhelpingu
Yeah there's so much nuance involved in figuring out whether a handful of
giant corporations should be permitted to summarily remove a streamer from all
social media because they dislike his political position. I like the part
where the one giant walking hotpocket described how he's _saving lives_ by
discretionarily removing interpretable expression from public view.

Seriously, what a joke. This is how the internet turns into another extension
of the ridiculous, culturally oppressive "entertainment" industry we were all
trying to get away from. The fact these people want these jobs should
disqualify them from having the jobs.

