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AGREE WHILE YELLING: On Creating Un-moderated Social Media Sites When We Know Better
Who remembers the Dateline TV series To Catch a Predator?
Volunteers lure unsuspecting men into a suburban honeypot. They pretend to be young teens in chat rooms (remember those?), and adult men start sexual chats with them online (ASL?).
Then, when these men come to meet the unsuspecting young teens, Chris Hansen walks out with the transcript of the explicit chat, and asks them to explain their behavior.
In later episodes, the police are waiting for these men outside.
Adults cheered the cops on. We laughed. We said those men got what they deserved. The antics of the show ended in tragedy, and it was canceled.
I remember watching this show as a 12-year-old. The internet was new, and there was little to no moderation. I was solicited by adult men myself…to be honest, the AOL chat room for kids was a great place to meet middle-aged men. The moment I said I was a young girl, my DMs were flooded.
Facebook and Twitter don’t have moderation tools because they set out to “ruin” free speech. They have moderation tools…and new social media sites have better and stronger ones…because we saw what the internet was like without it. We saw children solicited, and we witnessed scams that we…
