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Community Management Before Section 230, When You Had to Print Out Every Post

Published: July 6, 2020, 9:30 a.m.

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Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act\\xa0has been a frequent topic of conversation on Community Signal. Its existence as we know it seems untenable given\\xa0Trump\\u2019s recent executive order\\xa0and Joe Biden\\u2019s criticisms of it. On this episode, community and social media professional\\xa0David Flores\\xa0shares some of the history of how Section 230 came to be.

David worked at\\xa0Prodigy\\xa0just as they were coming under fire for a post that someone left on one of their message boards. While the initial court ruling went against Prodigy and found that online service providers\\xa0could\\xa0be held liable for the speech of their users, this decision served as the genesis for Section 230, and the ruling was overturned by the new law.

He also shares how he entered the field of community management and describes navigating moderation at Prodigy in the \\u201980s and \\u201990s. For context, all deleted posts were printed so as to maintain a record. He also discusses conversations with early community platforms and how Prodigy attempted to look after its employees\\u2019 emotional wellbeing during times of turmoil at work.

Here\\u2019s more of what Patrick and David discuss:

  • What was it like moderating before Section 230?
  • Editorial standards as a framework for community moderation practices
  • The popularity of Prodigy\\u2019s message boards

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Big Quotes

The basis for Prodigy\\u2019s community decision-making (10:28):\\xa0\\u201c[Most of our staff at the time came from the editorial arm of CBS], so they were looking at [moderation] the way you would an editorial decision. What runs in our newspaper? \\u2026 How do we treat their speech? Is it freedom of speech?\\u201d \\u2013@dfloresbx

After deciding whether or not to allow the word \\u201csuck\\u201d on Prodigy\\u2019s message boards (10:48):\\xa0\\u201cOver time, those standards became both more loose and more restrictive. We were looking at things on a word by word basis and running all the posts through automation and against lists of not just seven dirty words, but more like 77,000 dirty words and trying to figure out what would be appropriate for our audience.\\u201d \\u2013@dfloresbx

Printing out every submission you receive (24:51):\\xa0\\u201cWhen I got hired [at Prodigy], \\u2026 part of what they did was have us print every message we rejected. It\\u2019s possible that when I got there, we were printing everything because there just wasn\\u2019t that volume, but at a certain point, the volume became such that every post that was rejected needed to be printed, and then you had to mark why it was rejected. The reason being that someone might contact management and say, \\u2018Why was this rejected?\\u2019 We needed a record.\\u201d \\u2013@dfloresbx

Bringing a moral compass to your moderation standards (45:17):\\xa0\\u201cI use the phrase morally repugnant because that\\u2019s something that we actually used at Prodigy to say we weren\\u2019t going to post certain things because they were morally repugnant. \\u2026 [But now, I go on] Twitter in the morning, there\\u2019s probably been a tweet by someone overnight, and it\\u2019s likely to be morally repugnant, and it\\u2019s just sitting there. Now people are commenting on it, and that\\u2019s the entire day\\u2019s focus.\\u201d \\u2013@dfloresbx

The emotional strain of working in community:

\\u201cEspecially at Prodigy, that was a very intense situation to be in because as a community manager, you\\u2019re trying to be friendly. You\\u2019re trying to be helpful. You\\u2019re trying to relate to the people that you\\u2019re dealing with. Your favorite moments are when the community responds as a community and does things that really make a difference in their real lives. Conversely, when things go wrong, you\\u2019re that individual who they turn to and say, \\u2018Well, why did you do that?\\u2019 \\u2026 Well, I didn\\u2019t do that. I\\u2019m representing the organization that did. That was a lot of the conflict. Your personal self, your professional self, and then not just professional self, but yourself representing this larger organization.\\u201d \\u2013@dfloresbx\\xa0(33:25)

\\u201cTrump, pandemic, economic disparity, racial injustice, which has existed forever, and then all of those things coming together right here in 2020. It\\u2019s a unique time. It puts a strain on everything, and it puts a strain on how we see ourselves and the responsibility that we have with the platforms that we manage. I think most of us are doing the best that we can. We can only do the best we can, and we should always be striving to do a little better.\\u201d \\u2013@patrickokeefe\\xa0(42:50)

About David Flores

David\\xa0Flores\\xa0is the director of social media at\\xa0Albert Einstein College of Medicine\\xa0in the Bronx. He\\u2019s also the co-editor of Einstein\\u2019s blog,\\xa0The Doctor\\u2019s Tablet. Prior to Einstein, he worked in various community management and editorial roles at news outlets including\\xa0Everyday Health,\\xa0tvguide.com,\\xa0wsj.com, and\\xa0Prodigy. He came to the world of online community after a stint as a police reporter in suburban New York after graduating from Fordham University.\\xa0David\\xa0lives in the Bronx with his wife, Elaine, and their dog, Dexter.

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If you have any thoughts on this episode that you\\u2019d like to share, please leave me a comment,\\xa0send me an email\\xa0or a\\xa0tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported\\xa0Community Signal on Patreon.

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