MODERATING CONTENT, MODERATING MORALITY

An employee responsible for data security, Aila, worked at the social media platform ABC in 2024. As part of her job, Aila reviewed more than 100,000 videos uploaded to ABC and removed those containing inappropriate content from the platform each day. The raison d’etre for Aila’s job was the power of social media to make contents available for anyone and the potential influence it has on people and their actions.

In variegated social media accounts uploading short videos became popular among the users quickly, causing almost every user to upload a short video in at least one of their social media accounts. This trend has led to millions of videos about sorts of contents, with some being inappropriate to be shown to other users.

The criteria for determining the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the videos on the platform ABC were decided by the company itself and communicated to the employees in a guidebook. The employees were not supposed to delete videos if the video content did not clearly violate the guidebook regulations. The videos found inappropriate by the company included child abuse, nudity, terrorism, animal abuse and so on.

One day, Aila saw a video in which a fish was being abused. Aila thought the video should be removed from the social media platform, thinking the video portrays something morally wrong. Aila and other employees who agreed with her reported this issue to the company.
However, while animal abuse was considered wrong according to their guidebook, cruelty against fishes was not included in animal abuse, and could not be deleted from the platform because of the written rules of the company. Aila was disturbed by the video and she did not feel comfortable with ABC’s regulations which did not entitle her to delete the video. However, if she did not abide by the rules, there could be consequences. Aila felt frustrated as she could not decide whether or not to delete the video.
As social media is now an active and significant part of our daily lives and inappropriate content can offend, upset or negatively influence people and inculcate inappropriate actions. This is the reason why it has become increasingly important to decide on what content shall be considered inappropriate or abusive.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

What might be some of the reasons why cruelty against fish were not included among instances of animal abuse in ABC’s regulations? Was it an oversight? Is it because fish can be eaten?

After Aila and her colleagues reported this instance of content showing abuse of fish to the company, the company added fish among the animals listed in its regulations in its guidebook. What should Aila have done if the company had declined to do so?

If there were videos containing culinary recipes for octopuses, that are cruel to live octopuses for example, how should the content of those videos be handled? How should cultural differences be addressed when culinary methods and practices that are widely used in one culture are considered to be cruel and abusive in another one?

Twerking by underage dancers is an example of video content that is not considered inappropriate or abusive in some cultures. It is argued that videos containing children twerking with their parents is not inappropriate since that form of dancing is part of their culture. Does an awareness of cultural diversity and tolerance require the company to consider twerking by children as appropriate content?