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Porn Companies are Better at Moderation than Facebook

- Adam Clare

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Publicly Facebook, Twitter, and other social media services state that they cannot control what is posted and moderate it fast enough to make a difference. They argue that the technical solutions are inefficient and almost impossible. However, companies that distribute user generated adult content have effective measures to moderation to the point that they can take pride in their law-abiding. They have technical solutions and other moderation systems in place to ensure that illicit content doesn’t get posted to their sites.

Hopefully this serves as a demonstration that we can change how large social media companies distribute user generated content.

Take the difference in how Silicon Valley and Porn Valley handle user-generated content, for instance. On mainstream social media sites, instant posting is viewed as the norm — whether you’re posting a link to a New York Times piece, a personal update, or a racist invective, your thoughts will appear on the site as soon as you share them. Although some links and words do trigger a basic moderation algorithm that prevents the update from being posted, most moderation is done post hoc, often after problematic content is reported by users.
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Aggressive content moderation isn’t the only way that xHamster controls what lands on the site. As the terms of service makes clear, chats between users are also periodically monitored to ensure that they’re in compliance with the site’s policies. That may seem extreme, but there’s a good reason: sites like xHamster literally cannot afford to have content that violates their policies appear on their platforms, even momentarily. The penalties imposed by the government, billing agents, and banks — which can include punishments ranging from being banned from processing user payments to being thrown in prison for years — mean that even the slightest slip up could put a porn company permanently out of business, or worse.

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Be Conscious How Social Media Impacts Your Mental Health

- Adam Clare

Last year a study was released that identified Facebook as a contributor to people’s depression, it’s likely that other forms of social media do the same. Researchers are finding that if you use social media and compare yourself to what you see posted there will indeed make you feel worse; however, if you use social media in a more conscious way you may find that it does not have that effect. There’s no evidence that using social media is good for you though. For now, the best thing to do is ensure you’re using social media in a conscious way to keep your mental space healthy.

The takeaway, the experts say, is that you can control how Facebook makes you feel. If you tend to compare yourself with others or get envious easily, you might consider limiting your time spent on social networking sites or make a conscious effort to use them in active rather than passive ways. “Our findings show the importance of human agency,” says Edson Tandoc, Jr., co-author of the February 2015 study and assistant professor in the Division of Journalism and Publishing at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. “It is not technology such as Facebook that affects our feelings per se but rather how we use it.”

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Daily Social Well-Being Challenges

- Adam Clare 2 Comments

MeYou Health is an online community that is trying to get people to make small changes everyday that add up to big change. They have a suite of apps for Facebook and iPhones that remind you to drink water or partake in a daily challenge.

When you think about it, your life is the sum of little day-to-day choices – what you have for lunch, how to spend a few minutes of free time. For most of us, those little choices are made without much thought, driven by habit or a moment’s pleasure. That’s just how we’re made.

Now imagine the difference over the course of your life if you were to make enough of those little choices just a little bit better every day. It would be huge, and there are libraries of research that proves it. This is where MeYou Health comes in.

As part of the MeYou Health community, you get reminders from us and encouragement from friends to spark moments of mindfulness that wake you from routine. So instead of living on autopilot, you stop a second to think “what if?” And we make it fun! There are games, engaging Web and mobile experiences, fascinating bits of knowledge, and supportive social networks of people just like you. And all of it backed by scientific research.

Read more at their site.

Sustainable Power for Facebook

- Adam Clare

Greenpeace has worked with Facebook to convert Facebook’s coal-powered datacentres to environmentally friends power sources.

In April 2011, a Greenpeace report, How Dirty is your Data?, calculated that 53.2% of Facebook’s electricity was generated by coal. Energy consumption by datacentres is growing rapidly and each of Facebook’s US datacentres is estimated to consume the same electricity as 30,000 US homes.

Facebook said it wanted to develop its platform to work more closely with Greenpeace to “promote environmental awareness and action” after the two organisations published a joint statement on future collaboration.

Marcy Scott Lynn, of Facebook’s sustainability programme, said it looked forward “to a day when our primary energy sources are clean and renewable, and we are working with Greenpeace and others to help bring that day closer. As an important step, our datacentre siting policy now states a preference for access to clean and renewable energy.”

She added that Greenpeace had been “particularly effective” in using Facebook, saying: “We are excited to work with them to explore new ways in which people can use Facebook to engage and connect on the range of energy issues that matter most to them – from their own energy efficiency to access to cleaner sources of energy.”

Read more at The Guardian.

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