I think a lot about communities and how they work, because of my work in organizing, community building and existence in communities, both in meatspace and online. I’m an organizer for safe streets in San Francisco, a member with some authority of a meatspace community centered around a bike shop, and a member of an online community. I formerly moderated a different online community as it grew from 300 members to 70,000. A pattern I see often emerge is that people who are otherwise very kind can easily become petty tyrants in online communities, or anywhere else where a layer of abstraction between a moderator and subject exists. ¹

In (online)² communities, often a kind of petty tyranny emerges in people that it might not be expected to. This is something I have noticed on both ends, as a community member as a moderator.

In online communities, moderation actions generally do not have an equal and opposite reaction. The moderator is largely immune from the protest of the moderated. This is because the moderator both has total control of access to themselves (ie user can’t protest), and because [[It’s easy to not feel bad for people far away]].

This, as well as computers and digital social interfaces, make moderation actions that would be socially difficult in meatspace easy online. It is unsurprising that some people abuse power, this happens everywhere, but it seems to happy to more people in online communities, especially those who might not otherwise be susceptible to patterns of dickishness.

1. It is exceedingly easy to mute, kick or ban someone from a Discord server, it’s a lot harder to ask a friend who has stepped over the line to leave your home. The immediate social repercussions are largely removed for the moderator. Usually, you don’t even have to hear or see their reaction.
2. Social media is largely designed to encourage conflict.
3. Online communities that parallel meatspace communities tend to attract people who are not as comfortable in meatspace.

I think 1 and 3 are a particularly vicious combo. I have seen people who would only tell somebody to shut up in extreme situations in meatspace mute people without warning online. Anecdotally³, the people most active in online communities, especially communities where meatspace counterparts exist, tend to be more socially awkward, or otherwise do not do as well in meatspace social interactions. Before I came out of my shell, this was me. I struggled in meatspace social interaction, feeling out of control of social situations. Being a moderator of an online community was the exact opposite. Not only was there a bias for people to be agreeable to me because of the power dynamic, my barrier to action against behavior I didn’t like was far lower. In 2017 I would never have told somebody to fuck off in meatspace, but had no problem muting, kicking and banning people online. Obviously, the correct space to be behavior wise was somewhere in between, but I was swinging between the two as I swung between meatspace and online. This is something I’ve worked a lot on, though transitioning has also improved my security in social situations, which was largely the root of the problem.

I think point 2 is also important, and exacerbates the problems of 1 and 3. Take for example Discord, where functions that punish a user are shiny red buttons, vs the default gray. Combine that with the fact that it feels good to moderate when we’re told our job is moderation, and you have a recipe for petty tyranny.

Solutions #

I can only think of two solutions:

1. Therapy for everyone (half-joking).
2. Better systems.

In order to build communities that can scale, it is critical to understand and embrace building systems to account for the undesirable parts of human behavior. In online communities, this can look like requiring moderators to put reasons on all moderation actions (IME: works very well), and those reasons should be monitored by other moderators and admins. Some communities choose to make this moderation log public, all the power to them.

Another solution is harder to implement, but works fantastic in conjunction with moderation reasons: open discourse among the moderation team (bonus points if they talk to regular users who are important to the community as well). I moderated an online community that had both of these things, and we had relatively little problems, far less than similar communities without these practices. We received praise from community members and our mod team was largely popular, and enjoyed a friendly rather than hostile relationship with the community.

It’s also worth saying that [[Strong communities self moderate]], to an extent. But building strong community requires moderation.