Twitter reportedly knew Spaces could be misused due to a lack of moderation

Since Twitter Spaces debuted earlier this year, hundreds of people have reportedly joined live audio discussions led by “Taliban supporters, white nationalists, and anti-vaccine activists sowing coronavirus misinformation.” According to The Washington Post, Twitter didn’t have the moderation tools necessary to combat bullying, calls for violence and hate speech in Spaces before rolling out the Clubhouse competitor — despite executives knowing that would likely lead to misuse.

Spaces doesn’t have human moderators or tech that can monitor audio in real-time. It’s much more difficult to automatically review audio than text. So far, Twitter has relied on the community to report Spaces they think violates the company’s rules. However, if a host uses the feature as a soapbox to share transphobic, racist or otherwise bigoted views (as has reportedly happened), and their audience agrees with them, it seems unlikely that a listener will report the discussion to Twitter’s safety team.

According to the report, Twitter’s technology helped some of these discussions to go viral. Because these Spaces were amassing large audiences, the systems understood them to be popular, and promoted them to more users. Twitter spokesperson Viviana Wiewall told the Post the supposed bug has been dealt with.

“Ensuring people’s …read more