Policing harmful content on social media platforms

Abstract

Social media content moderation is an important area to explore, as the number of users and the amount of content are rapidly increasing every year. As an effect of the COVID19 pandemic, people of all ages around the world spend proportionately more time online. While the internet undeniably brings many benefits, the need for effective online policing is even greater now, as the risk of exposure to harmful content grows. In this paper, the aim is to understand the context of how harmful content - such as posts containing child sexual abuse material, terrorist propaganda or explicit violence - is policed online on social media platforms, and how it could be improved. It is intended in this assessment to outline the difficulties in defining and regulating the growing amount of harmful content online, which includes looking at relevant current legal frameworks at development. It is noted that the subjectivity and complexity in moderating content online will remain by the very nature of the subject. It is discussed and critically analysed whose responsibility managing toxic online content should be. It is argued that an environment in which all stakeholders (including supranational organisations, states, law enforcement agencies, companies and users) maximise their participation, and cooperation should be created in order to effectively ensure online safety. Acknowledging the critical role human content moderators play in keeping social media platforms safe online spaces, consideration about their working conditions are raised. They are essential stakeholders in policing (legal and illegal) harmful content; therefore, they have to be treated better for humanistic and practical reasons. Recommendations are outlined such as trying to prevent harmful content from entering social media platforms in the first place, providing moderators better access to mental health support, and using more available technological tools.