After finalizing his takeover and ousting senior leadership, Musk declared on Friday that he would be forming a new “content moderation council” that would bring together “diverse views” on the issue.I'll bet those "diverse views" include precisely no one who has ever dealt with online moderation, just a bunch of Nazis arguing over whether the N-word gets you a ban or not (no!).
I have become mildly obsessed with this issue, not necessarily because it matters, but because it's one of those places where there are actually people with expertise and "nobody" cares. We had years of newspaper comments sections being racist trash fires, with the responses basically being nothing but, "shut them down."
It's fine to shut them down, but you could also hire someone to sensibly run them instead of some failson intern. Sure most newspapers have no money now, but that wasn't true 17 years ago.
Anyway, everyone who has dealt with internet community moderation comes to the same basic conclusions of what needs to be done. Plenty of people who worked for Reddit or Slashdot or any number of communities over the years know the score.
Musk has the additional issue of big brand advertisers to worry about, but the solutions are the same.
Even corners of the internet filled with the worst people have active moderation, even if the focus is different.
Whenever I write about this I actually resist writing about what those solutions are, because I'm not giving away those secrets for free!!!