The secret rules of the internet | The Verge

But as hidden as that army is, the orders it follows are often even more opaque — crafted by an amalgam of venture capitalists, CEOs, policy, community, privacy and trust and safety managers, lawyers, and engineers working thousands of miles away. Sarah T. Roberts is an assistant professor of Information and Media Studies at Western University and author of the forthcoming Behind the Screen: Digitally Laboring in Social Media’s Shadow World. She says "commercial content moderation" — a term she coined to denote the kind of professional, organized moderation featured in this article — is not a cohesive system, but a wild range of evolving practices spun up as needed, subject to different laws in different countries, and often woefully inadequate for the task at hand. These practices routinely collapse under the weight and complexity of new challenges — as the decisions moderators make engage ever more profound matters of legal and human rights, with outcomes that affect users, workers, and our digital public commons. As seen with Black Lives Matter or the Arab Spring, whether online content stays or goes has the power to shape movements and revolutions, as well as the sweeping policy reforms and cultural shifts they spawn.