Volunteer Moderation

The newsletter for integrity engineering.

February 16th, 2023. Issue #9

TL;DR

The journal of online Trust & Safety discusses the "Pride Mod" initiative, in which Discord collaborated with experienced volunteer moderators to address hate and harassment against LGBTQ+ communities during Pride Month in June 2021. Discord and volunteer moderators worked together to identify and communicate with targeted communities, and volunteers temporarily joined servers that requested support to supplement existing moderation teams. The initiative was successful in helping communities better handle the issues that arose, and this paper examines the ethical implications of such collaborations between for-profit platforms and volunteer users.

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Think tank

• Generalizability of this approach

  • Future debates over the ethics of volunteer-reliant models for moderation would benefit from comparing different forms this model can take rather than treating it as a homogeneous approach to moderation.

  • This approach could work on other platforms, but there are significant implementation challenges that would require a long-term investment of resources to overcome.

• What would be the most effective balance between volunteer vs paid moderation?

  • Solutions to the most pressing moderation issues across the social web are likely to require participation from users as well as platforms.

  • Joint efforts could accomplish more than either actor could on its own.

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Highlights & Events

Resource | Transparency Centre

Events | Marketplace Risk Conference 2023

Events | TrustCon

Spotlight | Authillo

Events | All Tech Is Human

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