The Cost of Moderation

There are times I sit here wondering.

I am quiet, lost, alone.

The world has moved on, or maybe I was naive enough to think myself a part of it. Really, the perception was one of my own, I was an important and integral part of my own little world, one that I created that I had hoped people would enjoy being a part of.

Reflections of a simpler time, really. A roadside fruit stand in the age of Walmart. Those days where building it yourself mattered, where the small person could build a platform, and where the sheer mass of places like Facebook were not so much of the Internet in those days.

But I shouldn't take it so hard, these sorts of things fail every day.

We have rules, channels, visibility, what we can say and what we cannot these days. Freedom is not free, saying something does not guarantee anyone shall hear it, and the door is closing fast. I fear we are moving into a world of "the agreeable everyday" and worlds locked away because they may offend. What we can say and share shall be judged, hidden, and allowed into spaces based not on its merits or value to society, but because they cause the least trouble.

If I post something work-safe and agreeable to 90% of the world, that is by far easier and cheaper to moderate and filter than it is if I publish a work of erotic poetry. I feel the world in which we are moving into is not one where we are censored because of our ideas, but we are censored by the amount of backlash and negative feedback our words and ideas present to social media.

If someone complains and a customer service representative has to handle it, check the post, and moderate - I feel somehow that is a real cost. Multiply that by the millions and that is the difference between the red and the black for a quarter.

I feel it is cheaper to have the most agreeable content for the most people.

So is it right to say the ideas which challenge and upset the status quo are expensive? I am beginning to feel the content is not the problem, as the current state of society shall dictate what is agreeable and what is not. It is what causes the most outrage at the time. Given, some subjects shall always upset a group of people, like sex or nudity, so those exist in this permanent ghetto of expression.

And then I sit here wondering why violence is so agreeable to many. Why Hollywood gets away with hours-long computer effects movies full of violence between pixels and polygons, dehumanizing mostly, because there is no person there being hurt or an actor having to spit up fake blood. Movies that are less-interactive than video games, full of meaningless wow and eye-popping nothingness. Where legions of 'robots' or 'zombies' attack our 'heroes' because it is easier to have nation-less and race-less automatons be the bad guy.

I have seen them all before.

But then again, this is what 'agreeable' is nowadays. What can be posted on social media. What doesn't offend. Work safe and cheap to moderate since it is so mindless and pedestrian. One wonders if the fight for civil rights were to have happened today, would it have been swept under the carpet because it would have all been to costly to deal with. Too controversial. Too many people on each side fighting. The posts too hot, the flames too intense. This is taking up way too much customer service time.

If something challenges, even if it is a challenge to an unjust order, it is bad.

Because truly free speech causes people to be uncomfortable.

And the freedom of expression comes with a cost.

Inconvenience?