Johnny Cash Was Always Cool
The Challenges of Content Moderation
Last week or maybe the week before, the big kerfuffle on BlueSky was content moderation. A couple of high profile accounts - author Sarah Kendzior and comedian Patton Oswalt - got their accounts banned and/or suspended for making jokes that could be interpreted as death threats. Kendzior's joke was specifically a play on the Johnny Cash song “Folsom Prison Blues”, riffing on the line “I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.” She was commenting on a pretty ridiculous Wall Street Journal article that implied Johnny Cash was “finally” cool.
Humor is tough, particularly in short-form text on a site like BlueSky. And maybe it's an indication of Johnny Cash's lapsed currency that the BlueSky moderator team seemed blissfully unaware of maybe his most famous song. (Ring of Fire being maybe bigger?) But the moderators applied a strict ruling against death threats of any kind and nuked Kendzior's account. Which left me wondering where exactly the moderation team is located. A lot of content moderation is done by low wage workers in Africa and Asia. Is BlueSky following this model? Does the moderation team lack the cultural context to judge jokes like this? Or have they made the (understandable, given scale) decision to avoid the issue altogether and just apply rules regardless of context?
In any case, I'm sure you know, but Johnny Cash has always been cool. Let everyone know:
I Should Read... Nov 21
The New Yorker Some People Can’t See Mental Images. The Consequences Are Profound Research has linked the ability to visualize to a bewildering variety of human traits—how we experience trauma, hold grudges, and, above all, remember our lives. (jump the paywall)
Deadline Pope Leo XIV Talks Movies To A-List Crowd At Vatican: Read His Speech “It is wonderful to see that when the magic light of cinema illuminates the darkness, it simultaneously ignites the eyes of the soul. Indeed, cinema combines what appears to be mere entertainment with the narrative of the human person’s spiritual adventure.” (Though quoting arch-racist director DW Griffith was ill-considered.)
CJR The Tragic Loss of Teen Vogue Condé Nast folded a beloved magazine that treated youth and feminism as political topics, not trends.
Mother Jones Scott Wiener Defeated California’s NIMBYs. Can He Fix America’s Housing Crisis? By running for Nancy Pelosi’s House seat, he’s putting the abundance theory to the test.
Futurism AI-Powered Stuffed Animal Pulled From Market After Disturbing Interactions With Children “the cuddly companion was giving wildly inappropriate and even dangerous responses, including tips on how to find and light matches, and detailed explanations about sexual kinks.”
New Internationalist Where Is the Left? Radical organizing was once backed up by a network of physical spaces. How can we rebuild them to support the movements we need now?
Nathan Goldwag Ancient Globalism: Rome, India, China, & Beyond “In the valleys of Bactria, Zhang Qian discovered the surviving Hellenistic cities, founded by Alexander the Great two centuries ago; over a million people, living in complex urban centers, and engaging in fruitful trade and commerce, both with India to their south and Persia to the west. For the Chinese, long-accustomed to thinking of themselves as the center of the civilized world, it was a revelation.”
Jacobin Chi Ossé: Why I Became a Socialist After years of fighting austerity, real estate, and machine politics from inside city hall, I joined the Democratic Socialists of America because only a mass movement can make those fights winnable. (I'm not sure DSA is the org for achieving this, but socialism is 100% what we need.)
Until next time, luminous beings.