What the end of Meta’s moderation means
📆 Today is Friday, January 17th. There’s only one other Friday the 17th in 2025, happening in October.
Issue #248: moderation, small language models, David Lynch, and post-death password sharing
Meta’s announcement last week that they were gutting their fact-checking efforts and changing their approach to moderation on their platforms caught people by surprise. Meta (and Mark Zuckerberg’s) framing for the changes was about free speech; technology and social media scholar Danah Boyd sees the move as one that simply puts more of Meta’s users in harm’s way (warning: strong language in there). “This isn’t about free speech,” she writes on Medium. “It’s about allowing some people to harm others through vitriol — and providing the tools of amplification to help them.”
Moderation and Trust & Safety teams exist at tech companies for myriad reasons, but prime among them is keeping their users safe — or at least, that used to be the case. As Ryan Broderick points out in Garbage Day, Meta giving up means that their “social networks will immediately fill up with hatred and harassment…. but Meta is betting that the average user won’t care or notice.”
As worrying as Meta’s moves are for its own users (and for their own employees, as they began dismantling their internal DEI efforts last week as well), I also fear what their impact will be on the larger industry. Users should expect more protections, not less; even just from a purely bloodless business perspective, telling your users to expect more harmful content seems… short-sighted? I don’t know anyone who wakes up thinking they’d like more hate in their daily social media diet. Medium’s approach to moderation isn’t changing, by the way; our platform rules and the way we implement them is core to how the company works.
If this all makes you think “I need to delete Facebook,” just know it will take ~20 steps and at least a month, according to UX designer Robert Stribley, who walks through the process for those interested.
What else we’re reading
- What’s coming next in the world of AI? Look for the growth of “small language models” — trained on much smaller, more specific datasets than their large cousins — says machine learning engineer Sergei Savvov. (Towards Data Science)
- Facebook’s former VP of Global Communications Caryn Marooney shares a useful framework for big communications moments, like, say, when you have difficult news to share: S.W.I.M.
S: Strategy — Broad strategy or pivot
W: Why — Why now, why you
I: In Action — Specific, measurable actions
M: Mistakes — Mistakes will happen
From the archive
“The Straight Story 25 Years Later — Lynch’s winding road to the heart”
If you’re a David Lynch fan, this retrospective review of his film The Straight Story is worth revisiting. Film reviewer Lance Li makes a case for it being among Lynch’s best films; despite not bearing a lot of his hallmark bizarre touches, it shows the depth of Lynch’s personal connection to his art. “The film could as easily as well be on par with a TV melodrama, but whenever it does seem like it’s gonna preach,” Li writes, “it does exactly the opposite to get across the same message.”
Your daily dose of practical wisdom about digital estate planning
Here’s the least fun yet most important life tip I’ve seen recently: You need to have a strategy for what happens to your online accounts if you suddenly die, and that means starting with a password-sharing plan on a service like 1Password. (Jeffery Smith)
Deepen your understanding every day with the Medium Newsletter. Sign up here.
Edited and produced by Harris Sockel & Carly Rose Gillis
Questions, feedback, or story suggestions? Email us: tips@medium.com
Like what you see in this newsletter but not already a Medium member? Read without limits or ads, fund great writers, and join a community that believes in human storytelling.
