Kinks vs. Crimes and Gender-Inclusive Content Moderation at Grindr
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Bodies aren\\u2019t moderated equally on the internet. Content moderation efforts, especially those at large, mainstream platforms, can suffer from policy-based bias that results in moderation centering a cisgender gaze. This reinforcing of heteronormativity can leave some of your most vulnerable community members \\u2013 and potential community members \\u2013 feeling alienated, ostracized, and simply unwelcome.
Last year, in her role as CX escalations supervisor at\\xa0Grindr, Vanity Brown co-authored a whitepaper,\\xa0Best Practices for Gender-Inclusive Content Moderation. Insightful, with a straight forward approach to making content moderation just a bit better, I found that it was also a validation of good, thoughtful moderation that has been going on for a long time.
Vanity joins the show to talk about these efforts, which are tempered by a realistic acknowledgement of the limitations of this work, and how our need to be in other places (like app stores) can often slow down the progress we\\u2019d like to make.
We also discuss:
- Why it\\u2019s not our job to guess the gender of our members
- The state of AI trust and safety tools
- ChatGPT, Midjourney, and how much to worry about them
Big Quotes
How bodies are moderated differently online (2:16):\\xa0\\u201cWe want folks to express themselves and their sexuality joyfully, without judgment. Of course, without any harm. But what does that look like? \\u2026 There traditionally are [community] guidelines for females and guidelines for males, but the world is changing and folks are becoming more in tune with who they are, and we want to be able to treat them equally and let folks, especially I emphasize our trans users, who are uploading photos \\u2026 and if they are showing the top, then they\\u2019re considered a woman if they have female-presenting breasts versus male. There are just a lot of nuances there that we saw as we were moderating content from a community who is very fluid with their gender expression.\\u201d -Vanity Brown
When do kinks create a moderation issue? (6:38):\\xa0\\u201c[Kinks vs. crimes get] sticky when the kink looks like a crime. \\u2026 Everything is about sex and kinks at Grindr. With this mass of kinky stuff, which of these things are harmful? I often echo that, in my work, I\\u2019m always driven \\u2026 to do no harm. At the end of the day, are we harming someone? \\u2026 Do we have a responsibility to protect them and keep them safe? As we continue to build trust with the community, we have to realize that folks are adults, too.\\u201d -Vanity Brown
Empathy sits at the core of good moderation (14:38):\\xa0\\u201cIf you can\\u2019t be empathetic for the things you are not \\u2026 then you\\u2019re not really doing good thoughtful community moderation, trust and safety work. \\u2026 Ultimately, if you want to be truly great at this work, you have to protect the people who aren\\u2019t you.\\u201d -Patrick O\\u2019Keefe
What can community pros learn from dating apps? (24:23):\\xa0\\u201c[Community, moderation, trust, and safety pros] can learn from dating apps on the level of how personal and sensitive dating apps are in the content you\\u2019re sending back and forth. Folks using dating apps, a lot of times their heartstrings are attached, and their heartstrings are attached on a dating app, but not necessarily Amazon or shopping at Macy\\u2019s. \\u2026 It\\u2019s just important to look at folks with a microscope and treat them with kindness as those in dating apps hopefully are doing when they\\u2019re handling their customers.\\u201d -Vanity Brown
About Vanity Brown
Vanity Brown is the CX escalations supervisor for\\xa0Grindr, where she has worked in trust and safety for over 2 years, following more than 7 years at eHarmony. Vanity manages an escalations team of specialists devoted to handling the most complex cases that come through Grindr\\u2019s support channels.
Related Links
- Vanity on LinkedIn
- Grindr, where Vanity is CX escalations supervisor
- Best Practices for Gender-Inclusive Content Moderation\\xa0whitepaper, co-authored by\\xa0Alice Hunsberger, Vanity, and\\xa0Lily Galib, which I found via\\xa0Juliet Shen
- Grindr\\u2019s community guidelines
- OpenAI\\u2019s efforts to identify AI-generated text, which were only able to identify \\u201clikely\\u201d AI-written text 26% of the time, a bit more than the approximately 10% I mentioned during the show
- Love Light Community, a youth choir founded by Vanity, dedicated to \\u201cenriching the lives of youth and families in underserved communities through the transforming power of music and the arts\\u201d
- Love Light Community on Instagram
Transcript
Your Thoughts
If you have any thoughts on this episode that you\\u2019d like to share, please leave me a comment or\\xa0send me an email. 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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