Critics weigh in on Musk Twitter adventure

Law professor Alan Rozenshtein says that Twitter should follow the model of Mastodon to achieve a workable moderation protocol. Mastodon works like e-mail. Using the ActivityPub protocol, their users can choose to interact with users “on other Mastodon instances. And while a Mastodon instance can choose not to communicate with some other instance…, there is no central authority that can block a Mastodon user or instance from the network entirely. At the same time, no instance can be forced to host users or content that it doesn’t want to.” Users conduct their own regulation free of centralized control. (The Washington Post, November 12, 2022, by Henry Farrell)

Experts on content moderation think that Twitter new owner Elon Musk is over his head in dealing with the platform’s rules. He seems to think of Moderation as an either or situation to ban or not to ban, discarding all other options, including suspensions, education and warnings. Musk claims hate speech is down but analysts are finding hate speech phrases have multiplied, no wonder as Musk fired significant numbers of employees doing regulation with many others quitting. (Fast Company, November 11 2022, by Chris Stokel-Walker)

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