Concerning Mixed Social Media Platforms

CURRENT RANK: LOWLY SERF

To the Magnificent Social Machiavellian:

CHAPTER 3 - CONCERNING MIXED SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

But the difficulties occur in a newly moderated platform, particularly in mixed platforms where there is a new addition of moderation to an old unmoderated state. Firstly, these difficulties arise chiefly from an inherent problem which is there in all newly moderated social media platforms. People change their social media platforms willingly, hoping to express themselves more freely. This hope induces them to take up arms against the content moderators, wherein they are deceived, because they afterwards find by experience that their posts have gone from cringe to canceled. This also follows on another natural and common necessity, which is that those who have submitted to the new content moderation policies must tolerate the platform's moderation and suffer infinite other hardships which the moderators must impose upon their newly acquired communities.

In this way, you not only have enemies in all those users whom you have censored in establishing your moderation policies, but you also are not able to keep those influencers who helped you gain social media dominance because you cannot satisfy them with the engagement they expected. You cannot take strong measures against them, feeling bound to your follower base. For, although one platform may be very popular among users, yet in moderating a platform one always needs the cooperation and goodwill of the local influencers.

It is very true that, after changing established social media platforms a second time influencers are not so lightly lost afterwards, unless extraordinary censorship causes the platform to be hated. This is because the moderator, with little reluctance, will take the opportunity of the violation to punish the offenders, to clear out the suspicious accounts, and to strengthen himself in the most vulnerable communities. Thus, a platform may have needed only to disappoint their first wave of users to lose their foothold, but to lose a re-established audience it would be necessary to bring the whole world against it, which follows from the causes above mentioned.

New users to an existing social media platform are either moderated in the same manner and under the same content policies, or they are not. When influencers are accustomed to self-expression, it is harder to moderate them, especially when they have not been accustomed to content restrictions. To hold them securely, it is enough to have suspended the accounts of the influencers who were posting there, because the two user bases preserving in other things the old conditions, and not being unlike in content preferences, will scroll quietly together. Although there may be some difference in user base, nevertheless the moderation policies are alike, and the influencers are easily able to get on amongst themselves. The influencer who wishes to hold such additional platforms, has only to bear in mind two considerations: first, that the friends of former platform owners are banned, and second, that neither the content nor the users’ engagement are altered, so that in a very short time they will become entirely integrated in the existing social media platform.

But when social media platforms are acquired in a community differing in content preferences, moderation policies or influencer networks, there are difficulties, and good content and great moderation efforts are needed to hold them. One of the most positive moves would be for the influencer to go and post there. This would make his position more secure by personally connecting with the newly acquired users and demonstrating his commitment to their community. Because, if an influencer is present on the platform, inappropriate posts are identified as soon as they appear, and he can swiftly remove them. But if the influencer is not present on the platform, inappropriate posts are heard of only when they have gone viral, and then he can no longer remedy them. Besides this, the platform is not overrun by trolls and the users are satisfied by easy access to the influencer. Thus, wishing to be popular, influencers have more cause to engage their followers, and wishing to be otherwise, to ban them. He who would deplatform that influencer from the outside must have the utmost caution; as long as the influencer maintains his follower base, his platform can only be taken from him with the greatest difficulty.

The other and better course is to establish content moderation policies in one or two key areas which will tie the social media platform to you. If you do not monitor your newly acquired social media platform, you will have to keep part of your moderation team there.

A social media influencer does not have to spend much on such moderation efforts, for with little or no expense he can establish content policies there and keep them there.

He offends only a minority of the followers from whom he dislikes posts and content.

Those whom he offends, remaining few and scattered, are never able to harm his engagement; while the rest being unaffected continue to follow him, and at the same time are anxious not to post inappropriately in case they lose their accounts and content.

In conclusion, I say that these content moderation policies are not costly, they are more effective, they offend fewer users, and the offended, being few and scattered, cannot hurt the influencer's engagement. Upon this, one has to remark that social media users ought either to be well engaged with or banned, because they can tolerate lighter content moderation, but of more serious censorship they cannot. Therefore, the content moderation that is to be done to a user ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of a user or follower revolt.

However, if instead of content moderation policies the influencer maintains an unmoderated platform, one spends much more, having to spend time dealing with the consequences of inappropriate content posted on the platform. Then the acquisition of the new social media platform turns sour, and many more users are exasperated, and the whole community is harmed. Through having to shift the content moderation policies from one community to another, all influencers become acquainted with hardship, and all followers become hostile. They become trolls who, while banned from their own platforms, are yet able to spread misinformation. For every reason, therefore, such content moderation is ineffective as an engaged community is valuable.

Again, the influencer who acquires a social media platform differing in community guidelines, moderation policies and influencer networks ought to make himself the head and defender of his less powerful followers. He should weaken the more powerful influencers amongst them, taking care that no rival influencer as powerful as himself shall, by any viral post, get established there. It will always happen that some powerful rival influencer will be invited in by those followers who are unhappy with the content moderation, either through excess of ambition or through fear of censorship. Twitter was brought into social media by the users seeking free expression, and in every other platform where they established themselves, they were brought in by the local influencers who desired an alternative to the censored mainstream platforms. The usual course of affairs is that, as soon as a new powerful influencer enters a social media platform, all the subject users are drawn to him, moved by the apathy which they feel against the incumbent influencer. So the new influencer does not to have any trouble winning them over to himself, for all of them quickly support the content which he has produced there. He has only to take care that the followers do not receive too much promotion or too much advertising. With his own content curation team, and with the cooperation of the local influencers, he can easily keep down the more powerful of them, so as to remain the dominant voice on the platform. If a social media influencer does not properly moderate his newly acquired platform, he will soon lose the users he has gained, and if he does retain them he will face endless difficulties and trolling.

Top influencers, in the social media platforms they took over, followed closely these principles. They sent engagement and maintained friendly relations with the minor influencers, without increasing the strength of the minor influencers. They kept down the larger influencers and did not allow any strong rival influencers to gain authority on the platform. Thus, social media influencers did in these instances what all careful influencers ought to do, who have to regard not only present trolling but also future revolts, and diligently guard against them with every kind of content moderation policy. When inappropriate posts are identified before they go viral, it is easy to remove them.

But if you wait until the content has gone viral, the content moderation is too late because the viral misinformation has become unstoppable. Thus, social media moderators say that the beginning of a viral misinformation campaign is easy to stop but difficult to detect.

Over the course of time not having been either moderated or removed in the beginning, misinformation becomes easy to detect but difficult to contain. This also happens in social media moderation, for when the inappropriate posts that arise have been predicted (which only wise influencers can do), they can be quickly dealt with. But when, though not having been moderated, inappropriate posts have been permitted to go viral in a way that every user can see them, there is no longer a remedy. Therefore, the best social media influencers, predicting troubles, dealt with it at once, and, even to avoid deplatforming, would not let it come to a head. They knew that viral misinformation cannot be avoided, but can only be delayed to the advantage of rival influencers.

The wish to gain followers is in truth very natural and common, and influencers always do so when they can. For this they should be praised not blamed. But when influencers cannot do so, yet wish to do so by any means, then there is folly and blame in their content moderation policies and community guidelines.

From this a general rule is drawn which never or rarely fails: that he who is the cause of another becoming a powerful influencer on a social media platform is ruined. This is because that predominancy has been brought about either by appealing content or else by aggressive marketing, and both are distrusted by the follower who has been raised to the limelight under the influencer's power.

NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI II