| Abstract |
Social media is supposed to foster free speech by creating user-friendly web applications that let people talk, share ideas, and organize online. Instead it has created a new form of censorship, led by mobs who flag content as "inappropriate" to remove it, or who troll their victims out of existence. This talk will explore how these mobs work, what their politics are, and whether we should organize to stop them - or join them. Traditionally censorship has come from “on high,” via powerful institutions like governments, school boards, churches, and corporations. But over the past five years we’ve seen a reversal of this trend, as social media networks make it possible for censorship to come from below, via mobs who flag content as “inappropriate” and get it removed or hidden. Flagging is one way social sites create filters to eliminate noise and prevent harm. However, its implementation often mirrors the problems of censorship from on high: it can be arbitrary; it places a burden on unpopular speakers; and it is difficult for the censored parties to appeal when they’ve been unfairly silenced. Other censorship mobs don't use flagging, but form griefer groups who attack their victims via social media applications, essentially drowning them out with junk posts or trolling comments. I will show several examples of how user-generated censorship works in the wild, focusing on YouTube, Digg, the group Anonymous, 4Chan, and Wikipedia. One thing that's immediately interesting is that user-generated censorship has the potential to become a completely transparent process in a way that censorship from on high never is. But it is also an unexpected danger that arises when people use social media for political organizing and sharing creative works. Most importantly, user-generated censorship proves what anyone who has been in a riot already knows: Crowds are not always wise. What can we do about it? Should it be stopped, or is it a tool we can appropriate as a form of online protest? I'll come armed with some ideas.
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