Social media platforms which allow for others to capitalize on your content breed unhealthy behavior. The more prominent other people’s (potentially unwanted) content features in your spaces, the greater the incentive there is for misbehavior at the individual level. In this way, Twitter’s platform behaves in a fundamentally different way from other social media platforms, by allowing any individual to force themselves into your space without a way to eliminate that risk. Platforms have a responsibility to find ways to improve their social spaces, and providing greater control is often the first step.
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The social interactions on a platform are driven far more by the technical design of the platform than they are by the people who populate them. Over time, the userbase of a platform will be shaped by those technical designs, acting in a cycle which tends to exacerbate whatever behaviors the platform encourages.
One type of technical decision that influences platforms is the design of their access control system for posts; these decisions end up fueling a sometimes surprising amount of the way the platforms are used....
Recently, I read an article from the folks at Public Knowledge titled “Application of the “Diversity Principle” in Content Moderation”. As with all their takes on content approaches, I found it to be a thoughtful consideration of an ideal, backed by a solid examination of the history of our media regulation efforts, and I applaud the thoughtful consideration of how to move forward in a world where our media lives are increasingly ruled by centralized platforms and recommendations algorithms....
For a long time, I’ve wanted to write a series of posts about my thoughts on the modern web. They would be longish-form text with a few images tossed in.
In the old days, I would have just set up a LiveJournal (now: Dreamwidth) account, and posted to that. I might have sent links around to my existing friends, though in this case, my imagined target audience is different than my existing friend group, so I might not have cross-posted links....