“(Note: This document is subject to change. What moderation policy isn’t?)“
The question of what the best way is to control the content on online platforms dates back to the earliest of virtual communities, such as The Well. The existing moderation systems, such as Slashdot, Wikipedia and Digg, have been written about both in analytical form as well as critiques. It’s my personal belief that online moderation systems are not only about telling the community what they cannot do. It is also, maybe even more so, about encouraging the community to participate and giving them the tools to do so. This thesis is about one of these tools in particular: the flagging system on YouTube.
Flagging is meant to direct the attention of (people behind) the platform to an issue that demands action (or provokes an irritated reaction). The option to flag an item is often accompanied with the icon of a red flag. The red flag in general has different meanings in the context of history, politics and communication. In the context of (but not limited to ) new media, it has a communicative value and refers to the red flag as a signal. Videos on video sharing sites often contain the flagging feature for users to use when they experience issues with the content and/or for technical problems. Some platforms also include options to flag profile pictures, background pictures and/ or comments. Not all platforms use the metaphor of ‘flagging’ and call it ‘reporting’, ‘notifying’ and other. Because they all refer to the same option for the user to notify the company of certain part of the content and to avoid confusion, I’ll restrict to the word ‘flagging’.
The way I got introduced to flagging was because I saw movies / accounts disappearing before my eyes on YouTube. Sometimes they weren’t even gone yet, but the account owner already announced either in text or a movie that that specific account was about to disappear, the reason of this and the name of the new account under which users will be able to find him/her again. The reason why this happened and how got me interested to look into flagging and I choose YouTube not only because I encountered this way of regulating content there first, but also it is one of the major players in platforms that offer the service of self-generated content and self-regulated content. For the same reason that danah boyd chose MySpace: “because its mass popularity offers critical insight into participation patterns that do and will exist on other sites.” (boyd, 2007) One of the consequences of this is that people from the YouTube community respond more on system changes than on other platforms. And I was surprised by how self-referential the platform is; many videos are not only addressing the community, but also the system itself and its usage. People post videos about haters, other videos, other YouTubers, wrongly flagged videos, misuse of thumbnails, the existence of flagbots and other system related subjects.
Analyzing this system by breaking down the overall moderation system of YouTube and reading YouTube’s explanations on how the system should work gives a nice image of how often such a system changes. And it forms one side of the story to be compared with the other side of how the community experiences the system and the agency that flagging actually provides to a user. The issues that come up are comparable with the criticism that’s directed at other moderation systems, such as the lack of accountability and biased moderating views. The overlapping characteristics suggested the possibility of some type of archetypical moderation system or a common moderation protocol. Are there some basic moderation logics that are interchangeable? For instance, could one apply Slashdot’s logic of meta-moderation to another platform such as YouTube.
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