"Picture Twitter but with a lot less Elon Musk" is how the Wall Street Journal is describing Threads, Meta's new app. That right there is good news, maybe unusual where tech is concerned. I'll give you a list of reasons in a moment, but first it's only fair to state (or rather link to) my bias, which is not only about how Twitter's Trust & Safety Council was treated after Musk took over but … [Read more...] about Threads: The new social media kid
Where did my Twitter go? And other end-of-2022 notes
What a year it has been. And what a week. Or two, almost. I’ll start with the latest, because it was a telling cap-off to 2022: On December 8, three of us – Eirliani Abdul Rahman, a survivor of and activist against child sexual abuse, Lesley Podesta representing the Young & Resilient Research Center at Western Sydney University and I – resigned from Twitter's Trust and Safety Council, a … [Read more...] about Where did my Twitter go? And other end-of-2022 notes
Countering ‘hate raids’ needs to be coordinated too
The “hate raids” on Twitch spotlight an important online safety reality: It’s increasingly a cross-platform effort. Hate raids, or hate spam, is harassment on steroids and, as the Washington Post points out, it’s a form of online harm that has been around for years but “became a larger Twitch concern [last] month after a streamer … posted a video of themselves getting raided.” Because … [Read more...] about Countering ‘hate raids’ needs to be coordinated too
Online safety after Trump’s deplatforming
Among many other things, the past 24 hours were a pivotal moment for content moderation – for online safety worldwide. I'm usually not US-centric in the way I think about online safety, but what happened in Washington and online, yesterday and since, and then with the global platforms, showed us how far our thinking – and questions – about Internet safety have come. Last night Facebook and … [Read more...] about Online safety after Trump’s deplatforming
An Oversight Board & what’s actually, urgently, needed
Below you'll find background and context to this pivotal point for social media. For a more prescriptive view, click to "Social media's turning point: 5 steps needed now, no turning back." Suddenly things that looked like important, almost radical (potential) fixes a few months ago now seem like “band-aids” or symptom treatments. Suddenly we need a great deal more. By “we,” I mean us, our … [Read more...] about An Oversight Board & what’s actually, urgently, needed