User-Generated Censorship

Traditionally censorship has come from “on high,” via powerful institutions like governments, school boards, churches, and corporations. But over the past five years we’ve seen a reversal of this trend, as social media networks make it possible for censorship to come from below, via groups of users who flag content as “inappropriate” and get it removed or hidden.

Flagging is one way social sites create filters to eliminate noise and prevent harm. However, its implementation often mirrors the problems of censorship from on high: it can be arbitrary; it places a burden on unpopular speakers; and it is difficult for the censored parties to appeal when they’ve been unfairly silenced. Newitz will discuss how user-generated censorship works, and explore strange new trends in speech-eradication, by looking at examples from Flickr, YouTube, Craigslist, Digg, LiveJournal, and in a large wiki community. User-generated censorship has the potential to become a completely transparent process in a way that censorship from on high never is.