This is an interesting book covering much about social media and would be really good for someone who doesn't know much at all about it already. I liked the information on content moderation. I also liked the fact that court cases and evidence were presented to back up some of the laws. I wish the information went a little deeper though overall. I did like the writing style and found the book easy to read and absorb. I don't read a lot of non-fiction so I appreciate that.

Thanks to Tarleton Gillespie and Yale University Press for an advance copy.

I found this book to be problematical. While I agree overall with Gillespie's thesis that moderation & curation are at the heart of social media and that it should be open & a topic of discussion, the book is extremely hard to read.

There is just too much wants to cover, making chapters overly long and his writing dense. Instead of picking one platform as his example for each and adding short comments about other platforms, we get long lists of items, complicated sentences, and information about what seems like everybody. It's maddening and substantially weakens his argument.

It's advocacy he should be writing, even if it begins with analysis. And as advocacy he should have sharpened his cases, evidence, and solutions. That way the reader could be convinced of this need. Instead, and remember I agree with him, the reader is left weary and confused.

If we want to bring moderation into the light, we need better books on it.

Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media by Tarleton Gillespie (Yale University Press, 2018) is the first book I’m sharing with you today. Ignore the rather boring cover – it’s not just a book warning you about the dangers of operating online.

Takeaways for your business:

Make sure you are transparent about how you use your customer or community data. No surprises!
Be conscious of the active decisions you make when moderating user comments on your blog or other social channels.

The book talks about how social media platforms police what we share online, and what impact that has to our feeds and to society more generally.

It is quite academic in tone and heavy going in parts, but don’t let that put you off – it’s no more difficult to read than any of the other ‘pop science’ or business books you’ll find on the shelf at Waterstones.

It’s a fascinating look into the world of social media in particular. It’s more about communities than content marketing i.e. blog articles, but social sharing messages are also content, just a lot shorter!

The book will change the way you think about moderating content on your Facebook page, membership area, customer comments or company reviews on Glassdoor, TripAdvisor etc. It talks about the balance between freedom of speech and protecting users. It’s a really interesting look at how moderation works and how AI is becoming more prevalent.

The way that platforms organise, select and present content is a choice. You can replicate this in your own customer forums. The choices made are, as Gillespie puts it, “the commodity”. The choices are designed to capture attention, to keep people scrolling and engage users. The more the platform learns about the individual, the more it can shape advertising and personalised recommendations.

I liked that the author spoke honestly about how much work it is to moderate user-generated content effectively. Everyone says, “Start a Facebook group for your business,” but people are less open about the amount of work it entails to do exactly this – and the amount of reward you’ll see from doing so. Gillespie also makes the point that when your community grows, it’s impossible to know the users and contributors as individuals: they become “data”. Any exchanges you do have with them are brief. And might involve you suspending them from your community. Gillespie writes:
… [C]ontent moderation is also a lived experience. Every deletion or suspension involves specific users; every rule draws a line through a community, that then adjusts around it. …I want to consider moderation from the user’s perspective, not just in the moment of being harassed or flagging content or having a post removed, but as a lived and ongoing negotiation with the platform—sometimes a negotiation with the interface, sometimes a negotiation with the company itself, and sometimes a public reckoning about our shared values.

Gillespie warns that if people aren’t aware of how their data is used to shape their experiences on social media, they’ll be “taken aback” when their data is used in ways they didn’t expect.

I was eagerly awaiting the time when I could dig into this one as it covers a topic that is a major issue in these modern times. I am not a big social media user - I have a Facebook account that I barely use but I do use my Twitter account, mainly for bookish things such as posting reviews. I find the subject matter of the book intriguing, how exactly do we moderate information on social media without affecting freedom of speech? Is moderation just another form of censorship? These are questions I am interested in reading the arguments both for and against.

Unfortunately, I didn't quite get what I was expecting. The knowledge is almost too basic here. I feel this is a book that would be accessible for those who don't already know a lot about social media and, as a result, would find the information useful as well as interesting. I have to be honest, I knew most of the content before reading this so I didn't learn anything new. I like to read non-fiction to add to my knowledge of particular subjects so I was disappointed I could find nothing new within this title.

I did appreciate that Gillespie backed-up certain situations with court cases providing evidence of how these decisions have an impact in the real world. I would've enjoyed this more had it been more in-depth as there is no doubt that Gillespie knows exactly what he's talking about. I hope he writes a deeper analysis in the future as I for one would love to read it.

Many thanks to Yale University Press for an ARC. I was not required to post a review and all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

As someone who has worked in social media professionally, this book didn't teach me a whole lot. If you're new to social media or even a somewhat normal user though you might find something out. The main thing this book does is give a bit more background into why certain decisions were made to shape how content management works today.

For anyone who uses social media, the basic information from here should be stuff that you already know. If you don't already know it, then you're probably not the kind of person who would pick up this book to begin with. As for the particulars cited, judicial decisions and such, they serve simply to underscore the basic information.