The many dilemmas of content moderation
Following his acquisition of Twitter, Elon Musk has soon realized that things are often not as simple as they appear from the sidelines. On Thursday, barely a month after announcing that he was so deeply committed to protecting free speech that he wouldn’t even delete the Twitter account that published the movements of his private plane, the company has suspended more than 25 accounts that tracked billionaires’ private planes, including, of course, his own.
These are automated accounts that used publicly available flight-tracking data and allowed real-time tracking of the routes these private planes were taking, but which Musk had described as a risk to his personal security. Although the data remains publicly available, the idea that it was so readily visible on a Twitter account has apparently ended Musk’s tolerance.
What is the real dilemma when it comes to content moderation? Those us who have, at some point, had to manage a communication platform, however modest, know the answer: human nature. Set up a platform to help people communicate, and you will immediately find that some of those people will test the limits of that communication in every possible variation, and using every conceivable subterfuge. If we are also talking about platforms that do not prevent the creation of multiple accounts, the problem will be greater, because the dilemma…
