Periscope Will Allow Instant Peer Comment Moderation, Because How Could That Go Wrong?

You know what sounds great? A wonderful utopia where anyone who says something awful on the Internet would be held accountable for their words by those around them. It also—as anyone who’s ever moderated a comment section can tell you—sounds like something that will never work in the real world, but live streaming app Periscope is going to try it, starting yesterday.

Periscope is owned by Twitter, a company that’s no stranger to awful people using their platform to harass others, so I can kind of see where there coming from with this idea. On the surface, it makes sense: If you’re watching a stream whose content is aimed at a wretched hive of scum and villainy, there are probably going to be objectionable comments, but the viewers are likely OK with that. In other streams, the same comments may not be seen as acceptable. Submitting flagged comments to an instant, random jury of peers—as is the plan—allows each viewership to effectively set the tone of what is and isn’t appropriate. That’s the way the Periscope team imagines it, at least.

However, anyone who’s been on the Internet for five minutes knows that isn’t always the case. There’s a huge chance for abuse of such a system, both in overreaching from well-intentioned users and from trolls—not to mention trolls annoying everyone by purposefully saying things that will get them flagged for review. (This is a phenomenon we’re very familiar with around here, and too many flagged statements can be overwhelming for moderation—especially when the system can be used by the very people it’s designed to stop.)

Luckily, it’s an optional system for broadcasters, who can elect not to have their streams moderated, so we can hope that, at least for now, it’ll help whoever needs it and go unused by the rest. As Periscope grows in popularity, though, it’s hard to imagine that it won’t become like the rest of the Internet, where armies of trolls lie in wait who’d be more than happy to flag and ban a smaller, ideologically different audience into oblivion just for “fun.”

(via BBC News, image via Periscope)

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