On February 2, 2018, the High Tech Law Institute held a groundbreaking conference, “Content Moderation and Removal at Scale.” The conference explored how Internet companies operationalize their content moderation and removal processes. Over 200 people attended the conference in person, and hundreds more watched the livestream. This post rounds up some conference-related materials, including videos, speaker slides, articles from an essay package published in Techdirt, and more.
General:
Conference website
Conference hashtag discussion at #HTLI
Photo album
Videos:
Welcome and Introduction (including Sen. Ron Wyden’s opening remarks)
Legal Overview (presentations by Eric Goldman and Daphne Keller)
Overview of Each Company’s Operations (presentations from Automattic, Dropbox, Facebook, Google, Medium, Pinterest, Reddit, Wikipedia, and Yelp). If you only have time to watch one video, this is the one.
The History and Future of Content Moderation (panel featuring Nicole Wong, Charlotte Willner, and Dave Willner; moderated by Kate Klonick)
Session A: Employee/Contractor Hiring, Training and Mental Well-being (panelists from Automattic, Medium, and Pinterest)
Session B: Humans vs. Machines (panelists from Facebook, Wikimedia, and Yelp)
Session C: In-sourcing to Employees vs. Outsourcing to the Community or Vendors (panelists from Nextdoor, Pinterest, Reddit, Wikimedia, and Yelp)
Session D: Transparency and Appeals (panelists from Automattic, Medium, and Patreon)
Speaker Slides:
Eric Goldman, US law overview
Daphne Keller, foreign law overview
Adelin Cai, Pinterest
Aaron Schur, Yelp
Techdirt Essays:
Eric Goldman, It’s Time to Talk About Internet Companies’ Content Moderation Operations
Kate Klonick, Why The History Of Content Moderation Matters
Kevin Bankston & Liz Woolery, We Need To Shine A Light On Private Online Censorship
Alex Feerst, Implementing Transparency About Content Moderation
Jacob Rogers, International Inconsistencies In Copyright: Why It’s Hard To Know What’s Really Available To The Public
Adelin Cai, Putting Pinners First: How Pinterest Is Building Partnerships For Compassionate Content Moderation
Tarleton Gillespie, Moderation Is The Commodity
Paul Sieminski & Holly Hogan, Why (Allegedly) Defamatory Content On WordPress.com Doesn’t Come Down Without A Court Order
Sarah T. Roberts, Commercial Content Moderation & Worker Wellness: Challenges & Opportunities
Colin Sullivan, Trust Building As A Platform For Creative Businesses
Coverage:
Law.com: 5 Takeaways From Tech Leaders’ Content Moderation Conference
Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic: Inside Facebook’s Fast-Growing Content-Moderation Effort
Irina Raicu of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics: Notes from a Content Moderation Conference
Yair Cohen of Inforrm: Social media content moderation and removal policies: Some rare insights
We are hoping to have two similar versions of this event on the East Coast. Stay tuned.
The preceding is republished on TAP with permission by its author, Professor Eric Goldman, Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Santa Clara High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University. “Roundup of Materials from HTLI’s Content Moderation & Removal Conference” was originally published February 15, 2018 in the Technology & Marketing Law Blog.