Desmos Modules Explained #6 — Reports
In this chapter of Desmos Modules Explained, we will explain how the Reports module of Desmos Core works.
Moderation and decentralization
When we talk about decentralization, it is important to clarify some aspects regarding the content moderation system, which due to the structure of the blockchain can become much more powerful and complicated than expected.
Currently, large tech corporations are free to maintain control over the moderation of content within their products without users having a say in what content may actually be dangerous and what should not be censored at all. All these conditions are often hidden within very long contracts and are normally accepted by users during the registration process.
At the same time, a digital space without any moderation could cause the opposite effects to those desired. At Desmos we are the first supporters of a system that does not discriminate and does not censor any opinion, but we also realize that an anarchist system could be very dangerous due to the possible sharing of illegal content.
Censorship resistant
Within a decentralized social network, users can have real control over shared content as there is no constant oversight from a central authority. This is precisely why there is the need for a content moderation system that allows users to be self-sufficient without having to be constantly monitored by third parties. Users will have the opportunity to express themselves freely, without fearing repercussions related to their thoughts as long as this is considered acceptable by community members and respect their rules.
In this way, the dynamic according to which an administrator of a social network can unambiguously ban a user for having written things with which he did not particularly agree with will no longer be possible.
Power to the users
A report represents the way that users have to report misbehaving malicious users or bad contents inside a platform built on Desmos. Each report contains the necessary information to identify the target and reason that lead to its creation.
As previously explained in the chapter #2, each subspace represents an individual application built within the Desmos ecosystem with its own Terms of Service (ToS). Each user will have the opportunity to report malicious content by choosing from the list of reporting reasons included within these terms of service.
In order to allow as much freedom as possible when dealing with reported contents, Desmos does not take any default action. It simply acts as an on-chain reporting system. Once a content is reported, it’s going to be the responsibility of the subspace admins to deal with that content. There are several ways to handle this situation, depending on the needs and application architecture.
Let’s take an example
The architecture we provide gives developers complete freedom to implement their own content reporting model without any limitations.
For example, in case you want to delete a post from a subspace, you can either use the delete_post function within the x/posts module or devise your own way to make the content inaccessible to users. If you decided to use a centralized database you could mark the reported post as deleted making it inaccessible to users. In this case the content would remain on chain, but at the same time it would be hidden from client end-users. It is then up to the application designer to make the final decision on how to take action to maintain the level of moderation within the platform.
A constantly evolving system
In this particular historical moment, we would like to state that there is no single true technical solution to the moderation of content within social networks, since in addition to the technological aspect, concepts such as ethics, legality, and community also come into play. The best result we can aspire to achieve is to provide the most accurate tools possible to developers who are faced with the design of a decentralized platform. The more technologies evolve over time, the more we can contribute to making 3.0 a better world together.
