Social Platform Trust & Safety

First, identity authentication can ensure that everyone on the platform is a human entitled to join the platform...no bots, and maybe no commercial companies. It used to be that knowing someone’s identity was necessary to ensure that they had rights to participate. But much of the toxicity of current social media interactions is about identities as... See more

We can immediately rule out reproducing the current system in which a tiny number of companies govern permissible speech and what safety means for billions of people. We don't want social media that's like Twitter except without a demented owner. You cannot fix social media by having a non-profit run it or by guiding it with some ethical principles... See more

We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not... See more

But there is a better solution: allowing users to ban with one click not just the author of a bigoted remark but also every one of the thousands of people who liked the offending post.

Instead of asking whether or not a platform optimizes for engagement, it can be more helpful to ask how explicit or implicit these engagement signals are, and provide users with more controls to allow them to tweak their online experience.

Some users may not want to see any potentially abusive content at all, while others may, for example, need to sift through banal personal attacks in order to track credible death threats. The point, however, is that users themselves should be able to exercise significantly more agency over their own social media experience.