14.3. Comparing Different Platforms#
Let’s now look at how some different platforms have handled content moderation:
14.3.1. 4chan/8chan (minimal moderation)#
Sites like 4chan and 8chan bill themselves as sites that support free-speech, in the sense that they don’t ban trolling and hateful speech, though they may remove some illegal content, like CSAM.
One thing these sites do ban though, is spam. While much of spam is certainly legal, and a form of speech, this speech is restricted on these sites. If the chat boards filled up with spam, the users would find it boring and leave, so for practical reasons, these sites still moderate for spam (though they may allow some uses of ironic spam, copypasta [n5]).
14.3.2. Reddit (subreddits with volunteer moderators)#
Reddit is composed of many smaller discussion boards, called subreddits. These subreddits range from friendly to very toxic, with different moderators in charge of each subreddit.
Reddit as a larger platform decided to ban and remove some of its most toxic and hateful subreddits, including r/c***town (note: I censored out a racial slur for Black people), and r/fatpeoplehate. In a study of what happened after this ban [n6]:
Post-ban, hate speech by the same users was reduced by as much as 80-90 percent.
[…]
“Members of banned communities left Reddit at significantly higher rates than control groups.
[…]
Migration was common, both to similar subreddits (i.e. overtly racist ones) and tangentially related ones (r/The_Donald).
[…]
However, within those communities, hate speech did not reliably increase, although there were slight bumps as the invaders encountered and tested new rules and moderators.
14.3.3. Facebook (hired moderators)#
Facebook uses hired moderators to handle content moderation on the platform at large (though Facebook groups are moderated by users). When users (or computer programs) flag content, the hired moderators will look at it and decide what to do.
Facebook also discovered in internal research that, “the more likely a post is to violate Facebook’s community standards, the more user engagement it receives, because the algorithms that maximize engagement reward inflammatory content [n7].”
14.3.4. Removing the option of feedback#
For a period of time, most news organizations allowed comments on their articles, but around 2013 many of these sites simply removed the possibility of leaving comments [n8], as they felt allowing comments did more harm than good.
14.3.5. Public Figure Exception#
Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms had an exception to their normal moderation policies for political leaders [n8], where they wouldn’t ban them even if they violated site policies (most notably applied to Donald Trump). After the January 6th insurrection at the US Capital, Donald Trump was banned first from Twitter, then from Facebook, and Facebook announced an end to special treatment for politicians [n9].
14.4. Government Censorship#
Governments might also have rules about content moderation and censorship, such as laws in the US against CSAM. China additionally censors various news stories in their country, like stories about protests. In addition to banning news on their platforms, in late 2022 China took advantage of Elon Musk having fired almost all Twitter content moderators to hide news of protests by flooding Twitter with spam and porn [n10].