Virtual Civic Duty in the Age of Social Media

Social media is a conundrum of the early-21^st century, just as AI is becoming the conundrum for the mid-21^st century.

Some use social media to reveal themselves; others use it to conceal themselves.

When it comes to social media, I miss good old Myspace.  It seemed so benevolent and harmless.  Facebook effectively reduced Myspace to virtual irrelevance and devolved from a way to share vacation photos and recipes to arguing about everything from politics to conspiracies to the plotlines of various Star Trek incarnations.  The second leg of the Meta tripod, Instagram, is more photo oriented and increasingly littered with thirst-traps.  That platform has been subject to substantial and well-documented issues with child exploitation.  Then there is Meta’s newest leg, Threads.  Threads was supposed to be Instagram, but with text – but its engagement algorithms often seem to reward outrage.  Unless one manages one’s feed very carefully, Meta is a cesspool of clickbait, misinformation, and general toxicity.

Moderation on Meta is almost nil, and the little that exists is often faulty.  I once posted a Facebook livesteam of myself playing piano works by Eric Satie and was dinged for copyright against another person’s recording – even though the performances were radically different and my upright piano was noticeably out of tune.

In 2011, a different kind of social app emerged in the United States, Nextdoor.  Unlike Facebook, Nextdoor is geographically based.  Accounts are grouped into neighborhoods, which gives account holders a focused way to follow localized alerts (like missing pets), ask for references on things like home repair, or raise concerns about various issues.  In some cases, Nextdoor has been quite helpful.  I found my landscaper via Nextdoor.  We adopted our dog Brownie from a Nextdoor member who needed to rehome him. 

The moderation works differently as well.  Active, guideline abiding members are invited to become part of the review team, who can vote to Keep, Maybe remove, or Remove posts/comments that have been reported as violating Nextdoor guidelines.  In due time I was invited to join the review team.  I’ve never met or even exchanged messages with any of my fellow review team members (although I’ve received a few angry messages from people who didn’t like how I voted).

There are several reasons a post or comment may be reported.  The reporting may be done automatically, triggered by certain words or phrases – indeed, there are words and phrases so egregious offensive the post/comment will be automatically rejected.  But most reporting is done by individual account holders.  My impression is that a relatively small group of members submit the majority of reports.  Among those are members who selectively cherry pick political comments that disagree with their own – citing them as “national politics or religion,” which are not supposed to be discussed outside of dedicated groups.  There is even a member with multiple “sockpuppets” who zealously reports everything he sees as the slightest infraction.  Here is the conundrum: What if the post is from a news source, such as Cleveland.com or a local news channel, and concerns a national or international issue?  These posts are sponsored and taking them down is next to impossible.  Why would we censor comments about a national/international story when the story itself invites comments about that story?  This is an example where the guidelines are open to interpretation.

Interpretation also comes into play when it comes to posts or comments reported as Spam or possible fraud.  There is a particular member, a slight acquaintance of mine, who over-posts – whining about every aspect of modern life she seems ill-equipped to deal with.  This may be annoying, but it does not meet Next Door’s definition of Spam, so I generally vote to keep her posts and comments.

Selfies are not spam.  Thirst traps are against guidelines and I vote to remove them.  Someone who is verifiably local and offering a legitimate service does not constitute spam.  But an account which repeatedly drops the same information with a non-local phone number for a panoply of services, from plumbing to electric, is likely a referral service from out of state - and that’s spam.

Then there are those account holders who live to air their prejudices.  These rear their heads most often when a controversial issue makes the news.  Their posts are often promptly removed via automation – meaning the review team doesn’t even vote on them.  As often as not, the account holder reposts the same content complaining about the “liberal crybabies” who removed the offending post.

This all begs the question: “Hank, why do you perform a job for which you aren’t paid and almost never thanked?”  The only answers I can find for that point to two ingrained aspects of my character: my Advocate personality and my deep ties to the local community – I’ve lived in this area for 47 of my 59 years.  Either that or I’m a glutton for punishment.