Content Moderation Case Study: Twitter Experiences Problems Moderating Audio Tweets (2020)

Content Moderation Case Study: Twitter Experiences Problems Moderating Audio Tweets (2020)

3 years ago
Anonymous $drS9DEX_Sj

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210714/11142447171/content-moderation-case-study-twitter-experiences-problems-moderating-audio-tweets-2020.shtml

Summary: Since its debut in 2007, Twitter hasn't changed much about its formula, except for expanding its character limit from 140 to 280 in 2007 and adding useful features such as lists, trending topics and polls. Twitter has embraced images and videos, adding it to its original text-only formula, but seemed to have little use for audio. That changed in June 2020 when Twitter announced it would allow users to upload audio-only tweets. Remaining true to the original formula, audio tweets were limited to 140 seconds, although Twitter will automatically add new audio tweets to a thread if the user's recording ran long.

With Twitter engaged in day-to-day struggles moderating millions of tweets, critics and analysts expressed concern the platform would be unable to adequately monitor tweets whose content couldn't be immediately discerned by other users. The content would be unable to be pre-screened by moderators -- at least not without significant AI assistance. But that assistance might prove problematic if it caused more problems than it solved by overblocking.

Content Moderation Case Study: Twitter Experiences Problems Moderating Audio Tweets (2020)

Jul 14, 2021, 11:29pm UTC
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210714/11142447171/content-moderation-case-study-twitter-experiences-problems-moderating-audio-tweets-2020.shtml > Summary: Since its debut in 2007, Twitter hasn't changed much about its formula, except for expanding its character limit from 140 to 280 in 2007 and adding useful features such as lists, trending topics and polls. Twitter has embraced images and videos, adding it to its original text-only formula, but seemed to have little use for audio. That changed in June 2020 when Twitter announced it would allow users to upload audio-only tweets. Remaining true to the original formula, audio tweets were limited to 140 seconds, although Twitter will automatically add new audio tweets to a thread if the user's recording ran long. > With Twitter engaged in day-to-day struggles moderating millions of tweets, critics and analysts expressed concern the platform would be unable to adequately monitor tweets whose content couldn't be immediately discerned by other users. The content would be unable to be pre-screened by moderators -- at least not without significant AI assistance. But that assistance might prove problematic if it caused more problems than it solved by overblocking.