5 Things My Twitter Suspension Reminded Me About Content Moderation

1. IT IS VERY HARD
The tweet that had me suspended was a retelling of @MollyJongFast joking "I will kill you" as her spouse tries to take her food amidst her doing a live show w/ me & @benjaminwittes
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For one, it was funny in the moment, but didn't translate to the tweet, let's get that out of the way -- but it was still an attempt at humor and a quotation at that.

It demonstrates that when you do pure natural language recognition "future tense" + "violent act"
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It's not going to be able to recognize humor, satire, sarcasm, or protest.

And as much as we want to turn the dial all the way up on this stuff in the wake of events like Keshona -- that's not how this stuff gets effectively done (more on that at point #4)
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(2) AI IS NOT THE SOLUTION
Content moderation happens in two ways -- real people reporting it (that's the majority) and algorithmic identification either before or after posting. I suspect, but am not certain, that in response to a call for more moderation on ...
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incitements to violence after Keshona, Twitter turned the identification for violative text up.

The AI would flag potentially problematic speech, and a human will quickly review to decide if it stays up or comes down.

But that human is probably a contract worker ...
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...which is not per se a problem except that humor, satire. & commentary are very cultural & a large % of those workers come from India and the Philippines (large % also not working bc of shutdowns, making human review even harder)

( @ubiquity75 @CaseyNewton on this!)

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So AI likely flagged it, human likely reviewed it, did not get the humor (understandable), removed it AND bc things are crazy right now: suspended my account... bc the cost for Twitter of keeping up an account that *might* be violent is very high & *usually* suspension is low

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...But in my case, suspension was actually a potentially huge cost to them. For one, I literally study content moderation for a living. For another, I talk to a lot of journalists about content moderation. There's some really high level PR push back at stake.

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(3) GETTING REINSTATED IS A LESSON IN OLD SCHOOL CRONYISM & POWER

Which brings us to how I ended up solving this and so quickly. Despite all the shininess of tech, so often getting accounts or posts reinstated works the good-old fashioned way: influence, power, connections.

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It's not like anyone PLANNED for it to be like that. It's just what happens when you bumble into a nascent & developing industry and have to put out fires.

But nevertheless it's an unfair system that favors elites & disfavors the Every-person who doesn't know someone at...
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at a big tech company, or a government official, or someone with 100K+ followers, or...

( @sarahbmyers @jilliancyork on this !)

So even though I had connections, I was resolved to wait out my appeal...
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But before I could, a screen grab I had sent to friends of the suspension (comment: "lololol") made its way to someone at Twitter and another simply tweeted the screenshot with "good morning" (and my permission)

20 minutes later, my account was back.

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And that's what it's like to be on the sweet side of the curve and have a bunch of privilege -- and this, FWIW, is NOT HOW IT SHOULD HAPPEN, and what I have hopes for the @OversightBoard helping to create a solution for, which brings us to the next point...
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(4) THERE ARE NO EASY RIGHT ANSWERS
If you think the answer is to be reactionary against big tech, to "take down more news" or "create panels to judge truth" or "regulate them" or "break them up"

please move past the talking point and tell me

HOW IT WOULD WORK

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Bc except for a few experts ( @jkosseff @davidakaye @ericgoldman @JameelJaffer @blakereid @oliviersylvain a bunch I am forgetting...) people often don't show their work

I see a lot of anger, calls for action, & not a lot of thought about what that looks like long-term

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Over-censorship and authoritarian surveillance are real things. And so are conspiracy theories, misinformation, and cult formations.

That both exist and you cannot solve for one without worsening the other is EXACTLY WHAT MAKES THIS A HARD PROBLEM
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(5) YOU FEEL LIKE A GHOST
Finally, a few people asked me "how did it feel" and honestly, it felt like being a ghost.

I could see people, I could see them laughing -- I could reach out (literally: I could still click the <3) but it wouldn't stay.

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I couldn't speak to them or tell them I cared. It wasn't super dramatic, but that is simply what it felt like: like being in "Beetlejuice" until @benjaminwittes could hear me.

In sum, all I have to say is this was a very mundane experience but nonetheless educational

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(5) D

Also my computer autocorrected, of course it should be *Kenosha* not *Keshona*