Internet Talk

The bi-polar moderation strategies of Meta

Threads censors everything. So why does Reels censor nothing?

On Meta's Threads, NBA Threads is one of the bigger sub-communities on the platform, driven by a form of natural engagement, and aggressive promotion by Meta. As far as communities on the site go, they looked to be Meta's model customer: thriving and maturing.

But now many of them are heading for the escape hatch. What happened?

Ah yes, the moderation was too strict again

Pinpointing exactly what happened appears to be difficult, but here is what I can roughly see,

Meta employees are absolutely aware of the problem, but seem unable to fix it, somehow. It is a recurring issue on the platform, that the automated tooling appears incapable of handling the moderation challenges that come with a large platform.

This has been a constant point of critique about Threads. It stifles discussion, and the chilling effect of seeing such moderation failures means that discussion is always crippled. For a place that aims to replace Twitter, it does not even begin to meet the barrier.

Right-wing adjacent folks will now step in to say that this is the same complaint that they've had, but I find this dubious. Twitter was exceptionally passive in banning folks - the people Musk unbanned, like Andrew Tate, are exceptionally awful human beings.

Ironically enough, transphobia is one of the areas where Threads actively lets people get away with it, and borderline promotes in in the replies of any post around the issue.

And yet,

For all of the problems that exist on Threads, the exact opposite problem exists next door, on Instagram's Reels. Reels has a constant, and well-known problem with toxicity.

Case Study 1: wisewordswithneve

wisewordsfroneve is a university student who makes makes awkward, dad joke skits. It deliberately sits on the barrier between cringe and earnest, and straddles it exceptionally well.

I'd say the trouble started with thatcommentsguy. On the comments of every video, he would post lengthy poems, waxing lyrical about Neve and the content. He wasn't profane, and Neve had no trouble with it, even wishing him well when Instagram rate-limited his account.

But it appears he opened a floodgate, and the comments rapidly devolved. Now, it consists of people just commenting depraved shit the moment she posts, about the (mostly) sexual things they want her to do to them.

Comments on wisewordswithnieve posts

Comments on wisewordswithnieve posts

 Comments on wisewordswithnieve posts

Comments on wisewordswithnieve posts

It got to the point where she disabled comments about 25 weeks ago, and has seemingly decided to live life without them. It speaks to the absolute inability for Meta to moderate this space effectively, and how content creators are mostly left out to dry.

Case Study 2: miwuscience

It's not just men harassing women, and in that sense Instagram is egalitarian.

Miwuscience is a Chinese based creator, who dubs their videos into English. Miwu is, from what I understand, a 15-17 year old teenager. Miwu and his sidekick "bald guy" produce relatively inane science based videos, with a premise shoehorned in to showcase some scientific phenomenon.

What could go wrong with that?

I'm not a puritan. On some level, these are fucking hilarious, and certainly some of this energy has to exist on Threads. On the other hand, maybe not on an (potentially) underage kid's videos, especially one who can't might not be able to see the humour when translated to his native tongue. The same thing with Neve, it's funny in bite-size pieces, but as a whole, it's rather insulting to the person.

Case 3: Actual racism

Just after publishing this piece, I came across this abhorrent Reel.

Racism on Instagram Reels

Racism on Instagram Reels

And the comments just lap into it,

Racism on Instagram Reels

Racism on Instagram Reels

They have to know,

The issue has to be well understood by Instagram's execs at this point. Neve's comments alone have garnered attention from outside sources.

Beyond the specific examples above, Instagram Reels comments are widely understood to be toxic, even outside of the extreme examples. See the "Meta commentary" section for media that revolves around this phenomenon: largely, short-form videos making fun of it, or YouTube commentators "reacting" to it.

Instagram has seemingly done nothing about this. The comments sections continue to be quite awful.

The thing that interests me, though, is that Instagram is seemingly unable to hit the middle ground. If Threads was as edgy as Instagram Reels, it would self-implode immediately. No one wants to persistently be within an environment that toxic. But equally, Threads is the wrong end of that spectrum. It is lifeless.

On Threads, they apply a blunt hammer. On Reels, they back away completely.

On some level, I wonder if this is because they're aware Threads is a far bigger potential for bad publicity, while Reels comments are far less of a target of ire. You're far more likely to see news stories about abhorrent tweets, than abhorrent comments on short-form media. Tweets are "global", whereas comments are restricted to the video you commented on - the chance that it hits escape velocity is low.

But the reality is that the moderation approach fail both communities. In one, you chill speech so excessively nothing interesting happens, and in the other, you chill people from publishing their videos because of the nastiness they experience within their comments.

Clearly, they don't care at the moment because on paper, both are successful products. But outside of Instagram itself, neither have captured the cultural zeitgest, and if they were put into such a position where they could (via their competitors being banned, or self-immolating), I'm skeptical that they'd manage to do so.

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