Working with Law Enforcement
As community professionals, we get a zone when it comes to handling problems. We’re so used to fixing issues, that we can forget about outside resources that may be better suited for dealing with an issue than we are. Law enforcement is one of these.
Steve Brock has been working in community for over 25 years, with a unique depth of experience in moderation for big brands. He has had to work with law enforcement many times, and on this episode, Mr. Brock shares stories from those efforts. Plus:
- What has remained consistent in his career through four company mergers
- Determining “valid need” with threats of self-harm
- The implication of Facebook’s patent application for a moderation tool
“We’ve gotten better at dealing with [trolling], we’ve gotten better at analyzing it, we’ve gotten better at studying it and finding out why it happens, but the technology that allows that to happen is lagging behind in its ability to help us, the people involved, take better action online.” -@Stevo4747
About Steve Brock“[The police] are more than happy to look into [a situation] further if they determine that what’s happening is credible. We’ve been on both sides of that. We’ve saved lives in a schoolyard by sending police to an apartment where somebody was saying, ‘I am looking down on the schoolyard, and I have a gun.’ And it turned out that was true. At the same time, a person was saying, ‘I don’t want to be in this world anymore and I have a gun.’ And they were saved as well.” -@Stevo4747
Steve Brock is the director of moderation services at Mzinga, with a track record that includes high traffic and high visibility online communities from award-winning ad campaigns to top-rated prime-time television shows. He services not only clients but their customers, facilitating information exchange, brand, product and service awareness, customer service triage, and transactions.
Mr. Brock has been involved in community management for over 25 years. In 1991, he started the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.books.reviews, before moving to the Microsoft Network portal in 1994 to manage their Reading forum, where he wrote content, managed 10 bulletin boards, ran a topical chat every evening and brought over 350 bestselling authors to the chat room for live interactive interviews.
In 1999, Mr. Brock joined WellEngaged, a division of The WELL. Through four major mergers and two name changes, he has managed virtually the same team of moderators and a few of Mzinga’s current clients have been with them the entire time.
Related Links- Facebook is Patenting a Tool That Could Help Automate Removal of Fake News by Casey Newton, about Facebook’s moderation tool patent
- Mzinga, where Mr. Brock is director of moderation services
- Wikipedia page for Usenet
- WellEngaged, LLC, Acquires Proxicom’s Community Suite
- Delphi Forums and WellEngaged Join to Launch Prospero Technologies
- Mzinga Closes $32M Funding, Buys Delphi Descendant Prospero
- When to Report Someone to Their ISP by Patrick
- Community Signal episode with Alex Embry, a law enforcement officer, where we discussed credible threats made online
- Community Signal episode with Matt Haughey, founder of MetaFilter, where we talked about the well-publicized fake suicide threat on their community
- A Member of Your Online Community Lies About Committing Suicide: What Do You Do? by Patrick
- Community Signal episode with Howard Rheingold, during which Mr. Rheingold wondered how Facebook could have so poorly integrated community tools
- onlinemoderation.com, Mzinga’s site dedicated to moderation-related content
- The University of Arizona’s National Institute for Civil Discourse, which Mr. Brock is involved with
- Mr. Brock on LinkedIn
- Mr. Brock on Twitter
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