Participants will share experiences of when a social media platform took down something they (or someone they know) posted. Did they feel that they were “censored “due to an unfair or flawed bias against them? Did they understand the reasons why their content was removed? How did they react to the removal? Did they re-post that post or did they have to move on? These experiences will be grouped organically based on the speech's theme/topic. Participants will then suggest how they or their communities would have preferred to handle some of those situations.
This would flow into a discussion about participants’ thoughts on the decentralised approaches some platforms are adopting (Subreddit’s local moderation, Twitter’s BlueSky moderation and others). Participants will then collaborate and collectively think of models by which communities become in-charge of moderating their own content.
If 3 participants attend: we would open additional questions to participants such as – what do they think are the major challenges of achieving decentralization? Do they think content moderation in the offline sphere is centralized or decentralised? What moderation principles from traditional communities can be transposed to the online sphere?
If 30 participants attend: we would divide them in break-out rooms of 6 members each at the beginning so each participant gets adequate time to share their experiences. We would then reconvene to discuss a brief discussion about the decentralized models that currently exist and then ask for participants’ thoughts and suggestions. Post that, we will again split them into breakout rooms and ask each group to discuss principles/characteristics of an ideal decentralized model. Two volunteers from each breakout room would take notes of the discussion and would share the highlights with all participants to conclude the session.
We're hoping that many efforts and discussions will continue after Mozfest. Share any ideas you already have for how to continue the work from your session.:The ideals, principle and models discussed in the session would become the starting point for further collaboration on decentralizing content moderation. The Future of Free Speech Project (the facilitators’ parent organization) is working to conduct a stakeholder consultation in 2021 on the issue of content moderation and bring together tech experts to devise a decentralised content model/prototype that social media platforms can adopt. We will offer participants the opportunity and choice of joining our Stakeholder Consultation in summer of 2021. We will also set up a slack channel that participants can choose to join to share our collective research in the area and bring together the knowledge of tech-geeks and free speech experts.
Jacob Mchangama is the founder and executive director of Justitia and the Future of Free Speech Project.
Raghav Mendiratta is an Indian qualified advocate and a legal researcher specialising in the areas of freedom of speech, privacy, media, technology, and criminal law.