Modulating moderation: a history of objectionability in Twitter moderation practices

Abstract

With their power to shape public discourse under unprecedented scrutiny, social media platforms have revamped their speech control practices in recent years by building complex systems of content moderation. The contours of this tectonic shift are relatively clear. Yet, little work has systematically documented, examined, and theorized this process. This article uses digital methods and web history to trace the evolution of objectionable content on Twitter content moderation policies and practices between 2006 and 2022. Its conclusions suggest that, more than abandoning an Americanized view of freedom of speech, Twitter has aimed at building a crisis-resistant speech architecture that can withstand external shocks, criticisms, and shifting speech norms. This kind of modulated moderation, as we term it, hinges on a form of normative plasticity, whose goal is not necessarily adjudicating content as more or less acceptable, but moderating it on the basis of evolving and ever contingent public conceptions of objectionability.