Thread by @samidh

Today's WSJ reporting was especially difficult for me to read because it touches on a topic that probably "kept me awake" more than anything else when I was at FB. And that is, how can social networks operate responsibly in the global south? wsj.com/articles/faceb…

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It can't be easily disputed that social networks' rapid expansion into the global south was at times reckless and arguably neocolonialist. And the inadequate attention both within platforms and within the media on these issues is rightly shocking. What can help? Some thoughts...

When a social network operates in any market, it needs to ensure it can adhere to some minimal set of trust & safety standards. It needs to be capable of processing user reports and automatically monitoring for the worst content in all the supported dialects.

Seems like table stakes (and it is), but not operationally trivial. You must find ppl who know the dialect & context, train them on platform rule nuances, ensure they have a safe workplace, and hire enough to staff 24/7 and mitigate single points of bias. Takes time, not just $.

You further need to duplicate this staffing to train your automated classifiers. Local people are needed to tag content, evaluate accuracy, and do this repeatedly as norms & language constantly shift. Do this for all languages, perhaps even those spoken by just 1% of people.

We must also recognize that asking platforms to police safety issues on their platforms-- even ones they don't inherently make worse than the rest of the internet-- means that we are also asking them to surveil their communities in ways many may find invasive.

This may be less of an issue in places where there is established rule of law, but in other countries where governments use their power to unethically demand information about dissidents, your increased monitoring may put some innocent people at great risk.

Why operate at all in risky places? Why not let governments block you? In much of the world, state-controlled media has historically been the only media people ever had prior to social networks. FB and the rest really does democratize voice in a way that people truly value.

In the end, this is yet another area where regulation can be helpful. Social networks need to be held to a minimal trust & safety standard before they can operate at scale in a place, and those operations necessary for safety must be protected from malicious gov't intrusion.

My heart goes out to those who are victims of these terrible crimes across the world. Human and child trafficking are absolutely abhorrent. I send the teams working to stop these abominations my gratitude and wish them enduring resilience.