Masnick's Impossibility Theorem: Content Moderation At Scale Is Impossible To Do Well

Even if content moderation were implemented perfectly, it would still miss a whole host of issues that are often portrayed as moderation problems but really are not. To address those non-speech issues, we need a new strategy: treat social media companies as potential polluters of the social fabric, and directly measure and mitigate the effects thei... See more

You cannot fix social media by having a non-profit run it or by guiding it with some ethical principles (which at any rate means absolutely nothing without accountability to people). There is simply no universal ranking of content acceptability — there are in fact likely as many different rankings as there are people — and even if there were there ... See more

The essential truth of every social network is that the product is content moderation, and everyone hates the people who decide how content moderation works. Content moderation is what Twitter makes — it is the thing that defines the user experience. It’s what YouTube makes, it’s what Instagram makes, it’s what TikTok makes. They all try to incenti... See more

Content moderation is irrelevant. The greatest possible danger of social media is the catalyzation of mass, relatively instant global action on incomplete or incorrect information.

Moderation is hard. It’s time and resource-intensive, and it’s unclear what the standards should be