The gold standard for a security system is one that works even if your adversary understands it. Content moderation is the only major domain where “if I told you how it worked, it would stop working” is considered a reasonable proposition.
This is especially vexing for the creators who won’t get compensated for their creative work when an algorithmic misfire buries it: for them, “I can’t tell you how the system works or you might cheat” is like your boss saying “I can’t tell you what your job is, or you might trick me into thinking you’re a good employee.”
📑 Tracking Exposed: Demanding That the Gods Explain Themselves
Tracking Exposed is a small collective of European engineers and designers who systematically probe social media algorithms to replace the folk-theories that inform Algospeak with hard data about what the platforms up- and down-rank.
Cory Doctorow discusses Tracking Exposed, a collective of designers using adversarial interoperability to go beyond the guessing game of algospeak to provide a more concrete understanding of algorithms and content moderation. I really like Doctorow’s argument about moderation, comparing it with a boss keeping it secret what a worker’s job is.
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