"Not even against the rules"
Autumn aesthetics, quantum theory, relatable content, fantasy football, swiping right and the trouble with 4chan
The fast-diminishing returns of bad press and petitions
You might have seen headlines this week about a new report on social media from the New York State Attorney General, who on Tuesday wrapped a five-month investigation into internet platforms and the Buffalo massacre. The report runs to almost 50 pages, but boils down — I think! — to one rather disheartening concept: Public pressure can no longer do anything, really, to slow the spread of the internet’s most violent, most dangerous and most reprehensible content.
That obviously wasn’t always the case. In 2012 — and this is pretty crazy, when you think about it — you could still easily encounter graphic death threats on Twitter, ISIS propaganda on YouTube and child sex abuse material on Reddit. I have a very distinct memory of watching an Al-Qaeda beheading video when I was like … 13? … because that stuff was once so readily available that even a child could stumble upon it while bumming around on AIM.
As it turned out, however, almost no one wanted kids watching murders on the internet. Even platforms that were staunchly hands-off in the early 2010s (Twitter, Reddit) adopted norms against violent, racist and abusive content. The genesis of those norms frequently followed a well-worn pattern, too: shocking revelation or incident → widespread public outcry → gradual, hesitant platform policy shift. (For more on early platform moderation, check out this recent history by Will Oremus.)
But as the New York AG report makes clear, the returns on that public-pressure approach have diminished ever since. For one thing, there’s no longer a single, theoretical “public” that acts in concert on anything … much less on issues of content moderation. For another, the platforms still hosting content like the video of the Buffalo massacre, after years of opposition, are either well-insulated from outside persuasion or economically/ideologically motivated to buck whatever norms mainstream sites establish.
Here, for instance, are some of the AG’s findings on 4chan, the collection of anonymous message boards that brought you lolcats and rickrolling before its pivot to extremism:
“Between May 14, 2022, the day of the shooting, and July 8, 2022, links to video of the shooting were posted on 4chan 382 times, links to the manifesto were posted 179 times, and links to the shooter’s Discord diary were posted 53 times. In most cases, these posts were not removed because 4chan does not prohibit violent or hateful content.”
“When discussing policy on another mass shooting video, a head moderator stated that ‘if it’s on a board like /b/ or /pol/ it’s not even against the rules’ and ‘the footage itself isn’t illegal, any more than footage of any act of violence is illegal.’”
“The company told the [Office of the Attorney General] … that they ‘have not communicated with GIFCT,’ ‘have not performed any internal investigation of the Buffalo Mass Shooting beyond that required to respond’ to the OAG, and indeed in the last six and a half years … have only performed a single internal investigation into the use of their site to advance terrorism, violent extremism, mass shooting events, or hate crimes” in response to the January 6 committee.
“Notably, the video of the shooting that has taken root online appears to have originated from a single individual … [who] posted a link to the uploaded video on 4chan at approximately 10:45 PM. The post was removed by a 4chan moderator approximately 30 minutes later. By that time, however, other 4chan users had reposted the link approximately 75 times. Only a handful of these additional posts were removed by moderators.”
TL;DR: “They don't engage in content moderation,” New York Attorney General Letitia James told me at a meeting Wednesday. “And what they say is, ‘we're immune from liability, we sort of act as a library.’”
The AG and others have plans, of course, to compel fringe sites like 4chan to moderate more. Those ideas — some difficult, some unlikely, all deeply controversial — are subjects for another intro.
But they’re also signs, I think, that we’ve reached some kind of break with the past 10 years of the social web. And no report can tell us what is coming next.
If you read anything this weekend
“How TikTok Ate the Internet,” by Drew Harwell in The Washington Post. The average American TikTok user spends more than *80 minutes* a day on the app … a statistic that lends itself to questions like: how?? Why??? And will The Youth™ survive it????
“Everyone Wants to Be a Hot, Anxious Girl on Twitter,” by Kaitlyn Tiffany in The Atlantic. On the phenomenon of generic, blandly “relatable” content — like those inexplicably popular tweets from anonymous Twitter accounts that say things like “sharing music is a huge love language for me” or “without you it’s awful.”
“How the FBI Stumbled in the War on Cybercrime,” by Renee Dudley and Daniel Golden in ProPublica. This lengthy book excerpt has Netflix adaptation written all over it: computer dorks set out to become spies; dorks get bullied in spy school for not shooting guns; dorks (now grown up, perhaps played by different actors) go on to demonstrate how very badly the agency needed them all along.
“The Fantasy Football Kingpin,” by Xander Peters in Esquire. You don’t need to play fantasy football to enjoy this fun, dishy column — hell, I “played” one season (my brother actually played for me) and I liked it a lot. More an essay on the highs and lows of online community than straight-up sports fandom.
Last but not least, two truly stand-out reads on autumn aesthetics: “On Spookiness,” by Eliza Brooke in The Dirt, and “‘Christian Girl Autumn’ Goes Back to Basic” by Madison Malone Kircher in The New York Times.
👉 ICYMI: The most-clicked link from last week’s newsletter was this line-wife v. bucket bunny explainer.
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Postscripts
Exceeds expectations: retro sandwiches. Meets expectations: Taylor Swift. Fails expectations: Truth Social, Parler, Horizon Worlds, Decentraland … basically metaversae, as a class. An app that lets you (literally) talk to the dead. How “swiping right” became a thing. “I don't want to scrape hummus or peanut butter from a board like a snowplow tackling an expansive winter street.”
Ring doorbells’ latest victim: delivery drivers. From lady gardens to gardening. How much money people make selling feet pics online and how TikTok was conquered by quantum theory. Inside the black market for blue checks. Down the T Swift conspiracy rabbit hole. DALL-E for urban planning. AI for wine. In praise of the ever-convenient “y’all.” Last but not least, what could go wrong when a chatbot runs for office? “It's a synthetic party, so many of the policies can be contradictory,” its creator said.
That’s it for this week! Until the next one. Warmest virtual regards.
— Caitlin