Moderating
Moderating comments comes in conflict with a lot of people’s ideas on freedom of speech. After all, it is someone directly going in and saying whether you can or cannot say something. Is it alright in the first place to let someone else dictate what you can and can’t say on a platform in order to provide other users a peaceful and enjoyable experience? In turn though, when does moderating get to the point of being abused? Or how do creators who moderate in order to promote a peaceful community avoid looking like they just can’t handle negative criticisms?
This is something I struggle with regularly on my channel. My partner and I record a lot of content on games that are rated E for Everyone by the ESRB, and we know a statistically large portion of our audience falls between the ages of 8-14 thanks to our analytics. As such, we try to make sure that our videos that get a lot of younger viewers remain family-friendly, both in the video itself as well as in the comments sections. This has always been a hot topic with the channel, since we’re constantly having to question whether this is morally right.
The idea of moderating is a really uncomfortable question for a lot of YouTubers. It’s regarded with some degree of disdain, if you can even get to the point of bringing up. Among channels I know actively moderate their comments besides my own, and are fairly public about it, is the channel Mental_Floss. I know several channels have shut down their comments sections to avoid the hateful atmosphere: the Yogscast Network of channels and Pewdiepie just off the top of my head, but both channels now have reopened their comments section due to demand from their audiences. As another example, Feminist Frequency's videos consistently have the comments section turned off due to rampant misogyny and even personal threats (Thank you, Cae, for that example.).
So, if we can’t moderate (because of reaction) and we can’t not moderate (because leaving it alone is a mess), what do we do? There’s clearly an issue with the community as it is that needs to be controlled. On any other platform, that would be the reasonable assumption. There are plenty of platforms that have moderating teams. Why, on a platform that provides every individual user the opportunity to shape their own community, is the choice to shape a community met with such venomous hostility?
There’s an argument, I’m sure, that people can’t memorize every user they follow and that channel’s individual rules, but I think that’s an unfair argument. The general lack of regard for commonplace Terms and Conditions rules are typically the rules that are being reused and ignored in any instance this becomes an issue. If users are making any instance rules, those are probably pretty clear from the content they create already. For me, though, the rules my channel carries over are rules I see on any other platform, except with a few videos where language is a little stricter. But all of the rules I’ve read seem to come back to one principle: Be a decent person online.
In moderating my comments section, I do it so that users viewing my content will be able to enjoy a safe digital environment. I have nothing against users who swear or use language, but I know that a lot of my audience isn’t old enough to be exposed to that. Or, at least, I feel they aren’t old enough.
There’s a sticky subject, though, about comments like “This sucks!” or “That video was shit!” Personally, I’m inclined to delete these comments. They add nothing to me as a creator. On the other hand, should I then allow people to just post simple comments about my content being good? Is that equivalent or fair? I would like to say that it is to promote kindness and a healthy environment, but it is clearly skewed one way, and I can understand why it might seem unfair. Perhaps it just depends on the community a channel gets to generate, but really, is there a fair balance between the two extremes?