I am frequently contacted by press and by colleagues who ask me to define commercial content moderation, or CCM. In order to do so, it is also necessary to discuss social media content moderation, more generally – all of which leads to a need to historicize these practices in the larger history of the Internet. I am pleased to offer this pre-print of an entry on these topics, now in production for the Encyclopedia of Big Data, forthcoming from Springer (eds. Schintler and McNeely).
In light of the heightened awareness of these practices, particular given the recently filed lawsuit on behalf of Microsoft CCM workers, I hope this will be of use.