The internet has changed significantly since it erupted awkwardly into the global consciousness in the mid 90s.
However, there was always a barrier to entry. This was as much a technical one as it was an educational one. Common standards for building websites took a while and companies were often hosting either on their own servers or on server farms. Cue, the 'cloud'.
With the advent of cloud technologies platforms such as AWS and Azure were designed to provide a technical foundation upon which to build a product or service without needing the expertise to build the foundation in the first place. And so, companies that previously hosted content on servers or server farms started moving over to the cloud.
The clouds themselves are expanding all the time as evidenced in AWS. The number of tools available via the foundations are growing fast. As a result new products and services are emerging from these platforms all the time. This is why I think of these as 'Emergence Platforms'. They are the agar plate to our information colony.
A few of those many services that are being provided to the public are those we've categorised as 'social networks'. The ones we are familiar with are: Instagram, Youtube, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn and Flickr to name a few of the largest ones.
And there's a reason that I point these out. Tribal behaviour. I'm not talking about the Reddit and Digg tribes and the great war. I'm talking about very small tribes that existed before the internet did. And ones that I believe we haven't taken into account when designing these platforms. Let me explain my thinking...
I used to go paint-balling. It was introduced to me by a friend. I could head out and be with friends fire off a few rounds, lose. Swear in failure. Fire off a few rounds, win. Swear with joy. Clap someone on the back. Clear my nose with a farmers blow, pack up and head home.
Then, at work I would do ostensibly serious presentations on the timeline of the migration project from a hosted to server farm we were doing for a client.
These were two very different aspects to my personality, and one would definitely not gel with the other. In fact, I'm sure I would not have kept my job with my client if I had sworn as I had done while paint-balling. And I probably would have been uninvited from future paint-balling sessions had I been as boring and straight-laced as I normally was at work.
My point is this: There are tribes, and individuals within a tribe display significantly different behaviour from other tribes. And here's the kicker. An individual can belong to more than one tribe. Even where an accepted or expected behaviour in one tribe is antithetical to a behaviour in another.
There's a natural divide between these activities. I can cuss and spit while paint-balling, and host my clients at the Ritz Carlton. But not at the same time. And definitely not in the same place.
Prior to social platforms all the little tribal behaviours in our lives were contextual as well as separated temporally and geographically. Now, there's an undifferentiated feed. And to complicate things, and thanks to the interconnected nature of many of these platforms I can easily offend people like my bosses just by expressing my joy at shooting a friend with small ball filled with paint whilst cussing at the top of my lungs.
What's a good example?
This example is a complete fabrication and I'm using it only to make a point. I could easily have been a Baker and a nudist who shouldn't be nude while baking or bring a cake knife to the nudist beach. Please provide more ridiculous examples in comments.
On many social platforms there seems to be only one option available for anyone who posts something unsavoury. But who is to define unsavoury? Let's explore this a bit more.
I myself absolutely hate coffee and walnut cake and will report anyone who posts a picture of one to the mods. In fact, I'll go on a mission to find anyone posting coffee and walnut cake pictures and report it to the mods as harassment and persecution because I'm offended by the damn spongy nutty thing.
Soon, I will also make an /r/anticoffeeandwalnutcake subreddit. And because it's explicitly 'against' something it will attract people who want to hate and want to see the world burn in any case. Haters gonna hate. Joy. My little kingdom is growing.
I'll also ensure that there's an implicit message in all my posts that coffee and walnut cake posters should be brigaded, hounded and removed from other platforms. We've seen extremes of this happening and it's affecting our societies already. We know it as deplatforming.
What follows are a series of rules which can be implemented on social media. And, which I've 'designed' to give control to the user rather and to teach them tolerance rather than requiring heavy moderation by individuals within or outside of the organisation managing the platform who may have personal interests which provide bias to their content choices. The two mechanisms available to users are 'Mute' and 'Report'.
Imagine any single social platform as a small town with streets you can walk down. And every street has shops. For the most part you can walk into the shops freely. There's already people in there. And sometimes there's a bouncer. In some of the shops you like what you see so you ask the shopkeeper to send you a catalogue of their wares on a regular basis. Some of the shops you find funny and other ones are just full of wonders. You receive their catalogues. All is well and good.
One day, someone in a shop says something you don't like. It's not illegal, it's just asshole behaviour. You ignore them.
One day, you encounter a shop that you find is not for you. You ignore it, and anyone who visits it.
One day, you encounter that asshole from a previous shop in a different shop. You're already ignoring them. Fantastic
One day, you encounter someone who has spent some time in the shop that wasn't fo you. You're already ignoring them. Fantastic.
One day, you encounter someone who you think is selling crack cocaine. You report it. Fantastic.
From this, we can derive the following:
- Mute / unmute specific user
- Mute / unmute any user who has commented in a specific subreddit
- Mute / unmute any user who has posted in a specific subreddit
- Mute / unmute user if any posts have contravened regional law (defined as users' stated legal jurisdiction)
- Mute / unmute user if any comments have contravened regional law (defined as users' stated legal jurisdiction)
- Mute / unmute user if any posts have contravened foreign law
- Mute / unmute user if any comments have contravened foreign law
- View and Comment on posts made in other legal jurisdictions (this comes with a caveat that you may see posts which are illegal in your state and that you can report posts which are in contravention only with the commenters regional jurisdiction).
- Automatic as a function of existing mutes of users as a percentage of the userbase. It is important to note that this list is dynamic. As societies opinions change and the user base grows, some subreddits and users previously muted may appear in a users feed. Example of default mutes are:
- Subreddit is automatically muted if: [formula]
- User is automatically muted if: [formula]
As a result of public opinion automatic mutes change.
Mutes can be of a user in the case that:
- The user has commented in a subreddit
- The user has posted in a subreddit
- The user has contravened a law in their region
In the case of reporting behaviour this creates an organisational overhead which can be significant. In order to insure that users are discouraged from using this mechanism to 'deplatform' another instead of muting another user, the following takes effect on both users when submitting a report:
- Further posts and comments and any modifications of post and comment history are suspended until the matter has been reviewed by a platform administrator
- In the case of the seriousness of the accusation the administrator can perform a limited set of actions against the account with the infraction:
- Hide the comment or post until the matter is resolved
- Suspend the account until the matter is resolved
- Cancel the account
- Ban the email address from registering in future
- The post, comment, complainant and poster have their accounts flagged and may be identified along with the deciding moderator to relevant authorities in the case that the organisation is in agreement with the legal infraction. The flagging of the complainant, poster and administrator is important as these are essentially the two parties and a witness.
The below are the options available to both users and administrators for reporting posts and comments.
- Report if post or comment contravenes regional law
- Report if post or comment contravenes foreign law
- Report if post or comment contravenes organisations policy
The issue of reporting a post where contravention of a regional law, but not of a foreign law, has ocurred raises an interesting question.
If a post or comment by user A in jurisdiction A contravenes a law in jurisdiction B but not A how should this be handled?
- User A's post or comment is muted
- User A's account receives punitive action
- User A's account is flagged to the relevant authorities in jurisdiction B
These requirements serve 4 purposes:
- Ensure that the platform is taking steps to abide by regional laws whilst servicing a global audience
- Ensure that both administrators and users are working against the same rules
- Provide information to a user of their offence and reason for punitive action if any
- Use legal precedent against which platform administrators can design commensurate punitive actions against users of the platform.
For example:
In 1998, the United Kingdom incorporated the European Convention, and the guarantee of freedom of expression it contains in Article 10, into its domestic law under the Human Rights Act.
- Threatening words or behaviour intending or likely to cause harassment, alarm, distress or breach of the peace
- Abusive words or behaviour intending or likely to cause harassment, alarm, distress or breach of the peace
- Insulting words or behaviour intending or likely to cause harassment, alarm, distress or breach of the peace
- Sending any article which is indecent or grossly offensive with an intent to cause distress or anxiety
- Defamation
- Harassment
- Incitement
- Incitement to racial hatred
- Incitement to religious hatred
- Incitement to terrorism
- Glorifying terrorism
- Collection or possession of a document or record containing information likely to be of use to a terrorist
- Treason including advocating for the abolition of the monarchy (which cannot be successfully prosecuted)
- Compassing or imagining the death of the monarch
- Obscenity
- Indecency including corruption of public morals and outraging public decency
- Prior restraint
- Restrictions on court reporting including names of victims and evidence and prejudicing or interfering with court proceedings
- Prohibition of post-trial interviews with jurors
- Scandalising the court by criticising or murmuring judges
- Time, manner, and place restrictions
- Privileged communications
- Trade secrets
- Classified material
- Copyright
- Patents
- Military conduct
- Limitations on commercial speech.
There may exist laws particular to individual states. These would need to be included in the list dependent on the users state.
- Terrorist threats
- making false statements in "matters within the jurisdiction" of the federal government
- spreading false and misleading information relating to death or injury of members of the US Military
- speech related to information decreed to be related to national security such as military and classified information
- false advertising
- perjury
- privileged communications
- trade secrets
- copyright
- patents
- search warrants
- national security letters
- subpoenas
- pen registers
- trap and trace devices
- orders
- suspicious activity reports