| > None of the major social media companies made a real effort to come up with a solid set of content rules that most people can agree with upfront (at least in principle) and that doesn't change after every major news story. One problem with moderation is that you have to choose somewhere on the continuum between (A) "Don't be dick (everyone surely knows when they're being a dick, right?)" and (B) Enumerating literally every possible rule violation. You quickly learn that (A) doesn't scale and it gives your moderators maximum leeway, most of them having very, very, very different ideas of what it means to be an ass. And with (B), you get into the business of rules lawyering where users will continually use your own rule list against. By trying to be comprehensive, you create leeway through omission. This reminds me of forums with 1000 rules. Nobody is going to read them, and the only people who do are the ones who will waste your time by finding the one obvious rule you left off. And with this, it seems even easier for bad users to rally the support of obvious ones because they seem to make a good point, and you have a weirdly bigger issue on your hands than you would have if your rules were less focused. In other words, there is no way to make a set of content rules that people can agree with (in spirit not interpretation), else moderation would be easy. You can try this yourself. Pick a hot topic like trans rights or racism, come up with tweets that you think are obviously unwanted and also tweets that come close to crossing the line. And then try to write a rule that encodes this sorting in a way that leaves no room for interpretation neither among users nor your moderators. |