Law, College of
Nebraska Law Bulletin (Selected Issues)
Date of this Version
1-19-2023
Document Type
Article
Citation
Nebraska Law Bulletin (January 19, 2023)
Abstract
As online platforms become the primary carriers of news and information in society, their content moderation policies will have increasing power over users’ daily lives. Centralized moderation is inappropriate and inefficient because it forces all online communities to adhere to the same (and often arbitrary) standards. Decentralized moderation, however, allows most moderation decisions to be made by users who are intimately aware of the contours of individual online communities. Such decisions are less likely to restrict content that is not violative of an online communities’ standards.
This concept of subsidiarity mirrors the arguments made in favor of federalism in which the bulk of regulation takes place at lower levels of government and national regulation is reserved for particularly pervasive issues. In fact, as online platforms continue to develop, their moderation policies are beginning to resemble governance structures that are more akin to constitutions than they are to contracts. Reddit, for example, has not only embraced a decentralized content moderation scheme, but its policies mirror those of a federal system of government. Reddit’s federalism has allowed it to identify pervasive issues that are appropriate for its centralized admins to moderate, leaving the day-to-day moderation of its platform to users. It has also increased Reddit’s efficiency and reduced its power to censor users while simultaneously increasing the power users have in the governance of the platform. As online platforms continue to adapt their moderation policies, they should look to Reddit and its federal structure to reduce costs and empower users.
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