On #SaferInternetDay, Let’s Celebrate the People Who Work to Make The Internet Less Gross All Year Round
PLUS a Modest Proposal
Today is #SaferInternetDay — which makes for a worthy hashtag, but also: do we really believe that calling attention to a safer internet for just one day will change anything?
So, just like the argument that we should celebrate the people we love all year long, not just on Valentine’s Day, we could — and should — celebrate the people who work to make the Internet safer all year long.
Looking at you, content moderators.
My company works directly with content moderation teams to detect and block horrifying behaviors — and as a result, we see firsthand how much they care about protecting their users, what they struggle with, and where they shine. So we understand, viscerally: if it’s rough for us to see what happens online, it’s an order of magnitude worse for anyone on the front lines. Casey Newton of the Verge described it in his groundbreaking piece on content moderation, The Trauma Floor:
“The video depicts a man being murdered. Someone is stabbing him, dozens of times, while he screams and begs for his life. Chloe’s job is to tell the room whether this post should be removed.”
Content moderators are the digital equivalent of public servants: yes, they are paid, but that’s not what motivates them. What drives many of the best folks in Trust & Safety is a sense that they are doing something important; and it just might be one of the most important jobs in the digital world.
We mostly hear about content moderation when something awful gets through, often with dire, real-life consequences. But as heartbreaking and anxiety-inducing as that is, it represents just a tiny fraction of what these digital heroes experience.
And if you’re not exposed to it, thank a content moderator.
While Mike Masnick of Techdirt calls it impossible, at scale, to completely scrub the Internet of trolls, predators, and general ugliness, he’d be the first to say we should still do everything we can to try.
So we are proposing steps to make the Internet safer all year long, not just one day — like Valentine’s Day all year, for everyone who guards or uses the Internet. We are today announcing a multi-tiered effort to better understand what’s happening on online platforms, and asking our peers, partners and users to join us.
We are inviting:
- Companies with online communities to pledge at least 1% more of budget spend to Trust & Safety;
- Trust & Safety professionals to participate in a survey for Spectrum Labs’ inaugural State of Trust & Safety report;
- Consumers to participate in a survey to create Consumer Expectations for Online Communities;
- Users, moderators, and Trust & Safety leaders to help show what online toxicity really looks like — by sending in the sh*tty things they’ve received online, on any platform. Spectrum Labs will compile those images (redacted on request, and kept anonymous) and incorporate them into their State of Trust & Safety Report and share them with media, regulators and municipal, state and federal officials.
Yes, you read that right. I’m asking you to send in screenshots of ugliness — to saferinternet@getspectrum.io — in hopes that it will eventually get the attention of those in a position to make it better.
I hope you join us. And for now, let’s celebrate, invest in, and thank the people doing content moderation on the Internet — today, Safer Internet Day — and every day.
