Mike Masnick: So... we're excited to launch: Moderator Mayhem (which we've spent the last few months building, in partnership with Engine). A browser-based mobile content moderation simulator game: https://moderatormayhem.engine.is/

Okay... basically everyone on social media (and plenty of people off social media) have very strong opinions on how content moderation should work. But very few of them have actually *done* content moderation...

So, we thought, what would happen if we... made a content moderation simulator? And let everyone who thinks they know how it works... try out their assumptions.

So... we're excited to launch: Moderator Mayhem (which we've spent the last few months building, in partnership with Engine). A browser-based mobile content moderation simulator game: https://moderatormayhem.engine.is/

More details in this blog post here: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/11/moderator-mayhem-a-mobile-game-to-see-how-well-you-can-handle-content-moderation/

For what it's worth many, many, many, trust & safety experts shared their expertise, knowledge, suggestions, etc. in putting this game together, and we're so thankful for all their insight and wisdom. Any of the things we get wrong our entirely our fault...

ALSO: don't forget, at the end there's a social share button that lets you copy a representation of how you did: I won #ModeratorMayhem on Round 8 Promoted to moderator manager! Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Total reviews: 158 Safety: ⚖️ Speech: 📣 Achievements: 🥉3️⃣🤖⚽5️⃣🥈8️⃣🗓 Play: https://moderatormayhem.engine.is/

Question: As with some content moderators, will I need therapy at the conclusion of gameplay?

As we note in the game itself, the game does deal with some challenging issues and is not for everyone, but we (obviously) do not directly display problematic content, only describe it generally.

I was (half) joking, but thank you for responding. I'm very curious so likely will play.

possible bug: there was a review about breastfeeding, I clicked allow, and it popped up a message telling me I made the wrong decision, worded as if I'd actually clicked reject

good catch, thanks! Looks like we had the followup messages reversed on that one by mistake. Will fix in our first patch

This reminds me of time (2008-2010) when I worked on Google AdWords customer service team. Manager would review my emails and give me a “quality score”

Wow, this is awesome. Love the nod to particularly difficult periods for a platform (elections, World Cup, etc.)

What does “safety: medium, speech: high” mean? speech decision accuracy was high, safety category accuracy was medium?

It means your moderation decisions favored more speech over safety.

But the twitter files guys say I hate free speech. This is all so confusing. Great game — it was really fun :)

so this is kind of what happens on nostr, without a manager users and devs seem to be able to handle it atm

heh i won with 4 stars. won’t be doing that again - stressful!

I won #ModeratorMayhem on Round 8 Promoted to moderator manager! Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐◾️ Total reviews: 110 Safety: 🦺 Speech: 📣 Achievements: 🥉3️⃣🤖5️⃣🥈8️⃣🗓 Play: https://moderatormayhem.engine.is/

Moderator Mayhem: A Content Moderation Gamemoderatormayhem.engine.is Can you succeed at the fast-paced challenge of content moderation?

Incredible work, fun to play, and boy what a splendid idea. Well done! 👏

I appreciate the idea, but it sounds about as much fun as “Grading Simulator Pro” or “Faculty Meeting II”.

Mike will build that next.

Don't tempt me...

This is great

Mike, people are neglecting their real jobs by spending all day on Bluesky, and now you’re getting all the Bluesky shirkers to neglect their real jobs by doing a fake job

the secret is that it's not actually a fake job and Mike has just crowdsourced his side gig as a content moderator.

I put in five rounds for this stinking company and see what it got me… Must have been that I ignored the retina scan at the coffee machine, not my appalling performance

congrats I immediately hated the game and life itself within 2 minutes of playing which I believe is the intended effect

I see @mmasnick.bsky.social has reinvented SimBigLaw

Is this some kind of Ender’s Game situation where years from now we’ll find out we’ve been secretly moderating Bluesky the whole time

How else will we defeat the buggers?

Mike this is very stressful 😅

That's the point. 🤣

as a former content moderation manager for a social media startup this brought me back to a dark place. (very well done)

My only follow up after thinking about it for a while is you should include reports in completely different languages, just for a curveball, lol

We thought about that... we have a few in there that get towards that issue.

"fondly" remembering leaning on what used to be rudimentary Italian language skills to translate/moderate, ha

Google Translate is responsible for way too many moderation decisions...

WAY too many

In what round of the game do US senators falsely accuse you of deliberately sending their campaign emails to spam, forcing you to build a workaround tool that they never end up using?

What an incredibly smart way to make the point. Well done.

It is I

I do not enjoy playing that game.

Then we did something right.

It's very well done and captures the challenges of moderation. It's also very frustrating!

Waiting for Bluesky to hire me.

I lost #ModeratorMayhem on Round 2 I quit! Rating: ⭐⭐◾️◾️◾️ Total reviews: 21 Safety: ⚖️ Speech: 📣 Play: https://moderatormayhem.engine.is/ I'm too slow for the boss' liking and overthink things (might explain why I stopped moderating message boards in the 2000's)

Uhhhh I was fired immediately 😂 whoops

I scored a 100% in one round and thought I was doing well, got fired in the next one lol.

1- It's fun. 2- The timer is stressing me out. 3. I think I passed Part 1. 4. Can we get a leaderboard? 5. Can I put this as a reference on my resume if I beat the game?

I won #ModeratorMayhem on Round 8 Promoted to moderator manager! Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐◾️ Total reviews: 114 Safety: 🦺 Speech: 📣 Achievements: 🥉3️⃣🗳🤖5️⃣🥈8️⃣🗓 Play: https://moderatormayhem.engine.is/ ngl, this game was stressful, but at least I know I've learned some things over the years.

I'm ready to judge everyone.

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