Clubhouse makes an age old mistake

In light of recent issues on Clubhouse & harassment targeted at @taylorlorenz, I want to share some thoughts re how difficult it will be for CH to set up an effective moderation system -- in particular, how difficult it will be to protect women & other marginalized groups. /1

Days after our conversation, I attended a corporate mixer where an investor from a Silicon Valley VC fund told me bluntly, “Community building is dangerous.” We were on the topic of social media, and where moderation comes in. It’s a losing game, which makes it unattractive to investors, he said. For startups trying to pull that off, “it’s more of ... See more

Zuckerberg also acknowledged that there is still a debate over the degree to which audio — particularly live audio — ought to be moderated. If I walk by your picnic table in the park and hear you sharing misinformation with your friends, I’m not going to call the police. If the same conversation took place on Facebook audio rooms, should moderators... See more

But interestingly, Clubhouse, at least so far, is *nicer* than Twitter -- conversations on politically loaded topics that would instantly collapse into all out warfare on Twitter can sustain for many hours on Clubhouse, tense but not explosive. Why is that? Draw a two by two grid, with "Active and Passive" on one axis and "Approve and Disapprove" o... See more

Illich’s anecdote is, of course, a provocative reversal of the usual way that new media tend to be presented as a necessarily democratizing and empowering force, and it seems closer to mark as the events of the last decade or so have illustrated. The ostensible promise of social media was that anyone’s voice could now be heard. Whether anyone would

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There is the argument (that I regularly advocate) that pushing out the moderation to the ends of the network (i.e., giving more controls to the end users) is better, but that also has some complications in that it puts the burden on end users, and they have neither the time nor inclination to continually tweak their own settings. No matter wh

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