Thread by @natematias

How can social / computational science help make sense of content moderation & platform policies? People shared ~30 questions over the last day. Over the next few days, I'll summarize scholarship & point to others doing important ongoing work

https://twitter.com/natematias/status/1347968149468172288

What should society do about organized, dedicated actors whose purpose is to undermine a free society?

Debates on this question can start by thinking of groups as movements with leaders, resources, and organizing structures, as McCarthy & Zald describe

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_…

If you don't recognize the ecosystem of actors with money, connections, & influence, you can get distracted by what's visible on a single online platform.

@JessieNYC described structures of white nationalist power in her *2009* book on Cyber Racism

rowman.com/ISBN/978074256…

When tech platforms ban hate groups, banks close accounts, or people take white nationalist groups to court, the idea is to increase the cost of organizing to the point that movements' capacity to act is considerably hampered. That's about association more so than speech

Tech policy's obsession with speech/content is a mismatch. Connections & coordination are as much a concern as content.

And, as the UN Doha Declaration summarizes here, we have rich tradition for thinking about association rights & their limits unodc.org/e4j/en/terrori…

On the limits of "content" policy, some asked if we can learn from Wikipedia. The answer? It's fundamentally different—as a shared resource, it's a "communal public good." FB, Twitter, email, Parler are "connective public goods," & they work differently.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.111…

Connective public goods include the mail & now mobile phones

While we think of free-riding as the risk to classic public goods, digital public goods struggle with bad actors & manipulation as they become more influential, as @makoshark & @aaronshaw argue: mako.cc/academic/hill_…

Because the impact and desirability of manipulation grows with scale, some like @AdrienneLaF argue that the scale of digital platforms is the root of our problems. If humanity could be less connectable, then platform power could be less dangerous

theatlantic.com/technology/arc…

I'll end tonight's thread by noting that smaller, less connective platforms won't solve white supremacy. White supremacists opposed to inclusive democracy have run the US for most of its history, without the Internet. Change needs to be deeper & wider than tech & also include it

I think that covers about 2/30 questions. I'll return to this thread tomorrow and will likely continue throughout the week.