Meredith Silverman

I chose to write about Flock.com, a new browser that won the community award this year at SXSW.  I used Flock as a jumping-off point to envision the future of the web.  Read it.

I thought I’d already written this paper, but I had accidentally read ahead on the syllabus.  Here, then, is my actual midterm paper for Social Facts.

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We were asked to pick a site, describe what it does, some dilemmas it faces, and how it addresses them.  Then we were asked to think about one thing that, if changed, would make the site either better or worse.

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The N is a TV network for teens, under the Nickelodeon/MTV umbrella.  I work for its website (www.The-N.com), where viewers can watch shows they’ve missed and discuss those they’ve seen.  The site has a broader appeal too: it includes gaming, social networking, articles, and other media.

The site’s major goals are to get current viewers more involved in the programming, to attract new viewers, and to grow an audience of dedicated site users, whether they actually watch the TV channel or not.

Dilemma 1: Core Message vs. Broad Appeal
The first dilemma The-N.com faces is how to present a relatively narrow message to a broad audience. Aside from video and chat about the shows, what activities should be included or excluded, enabled or forbidden?

How do you stay on-message while allowing user involvement?  For instance, should users be encouraged to discuss shows that no longer air on The N?  What about shows on other Viacom-owned channels, or other networks altogether?  Where do you draw the line?

The N has approached this dilemma by offering features that are popular with their demographic on other sites.  That has resulted in a hodge-podge of features from fan fiction to fashion articles.

It also means the site is constantly playing catch-up with other sites.  In fact, it’s competing with an unlimited number of other sites, each of which might do only one thing well.

Dilemma 2: Safe vs. Sterile
The second major dilemma faced by The-N.com is keeping its users safe while facilitating interesting communication.

The site positions itself as a safe online destination for people under the age of 18, and it is.  All user-posted images and all message board posts are moderated.  It’s forbidden to post outside links, identifying information, email addresses or messaging screennames.

Personal messages are not monitored unless a specific user is reported.  “Real-time” chat in several applications goes through a smut filter, and full-time moderators are on the lookout for abuses.

The punishment for abuse is temporary suspension, followed by deletion of accounts and blocked IP addresses.  The-N.com runs a tight ship.

However, all this safety comes at an expense.  The-N.com’s forums are dull.  A certain amount of self-censoring seems to be taking place.  The conversations on The-N.com’s message boards are reminiscent the kind of fun that kids have when an adult is in the room.  The users have a sense that they’re being monitored.

Removal of Consequences
I like to imagine what would happen to this site if everyone who works there got up and walked away from our desks for a few months.  How long would it take for the users to notice that the consequences for misbehavior had been removed?  How would the site change?

Example 1: Less Moderation
One of our competitor sites, gaiaonline.com, offers similar activities to The-N.com, but with less moderation.  Images and links are allowed.  There’s staff presence, but no moderator presence – you don’t feel watched on Gaia like you do on The N.

One day on Gaia, I witnessed a user getting flamed in a chat room.  “DON’T TALK TO GOLFGUY97,” one user warned the others.  “HE’S A PERVERT.”  The user in question left that chatroom and immediately went into another, where I found him chatting up someone new.

In the short term, users can flout the rules.  But their victims can report violations, and the consequences for breaking the rules is still the same: removal from the site.  Users are empowered to look after themselves, but when all else fails, a system of consequences can be brought to bear.

Another consequence of the removal of pre-filtering is that message board posts go up immediately.  Threads frequently get up to the millions of replies.  Often they’re insipid, but sometimes a sense of experimentation leads to new ideas and activities.

User-planned activities abound on Gaia.  One of the reasons for this is the existence of an economy.  Users can hold contests, announce them on message boards, and give out rewards – currency or items earned on the site through hours of gameplay and chat (or by purchasing them with a credit card).  This behavior is totally emergent and completely addictive to both entrant and judge.

The equilibrium on Gaia between user-freedom and site control has led to an atmosphere of cooperation and experimentation.

Example 2: De Facto Moderation
For an assignment earlier this semester, I explored a site called gnomz.com.  That site started out as a French-language tool to allow users to create their own comic strips, and read and vote on other people’s creations.  The site asks its users not to post explicit or inappropriate content.

At some point, it must have become obvious that there were no consequences whatsoever for violating the rules set forth by gnomz.com (or at least, for violating them in English). English-speakers with a love for potty humor have taken over the site.

For my assignment, I posted two comic strips at around midnight.  The first one got commented within the hour – in fact, I got slammed for spelling “Princess Leia” the incorrect traditional way, “Leah.”  On further exploration, I discovered that the same commenter, grouchobeer, was all over the site.  He haunts the message boards – in one case asking a too-savvy newbie who he really was.  Grouchobeer’s avatar’s shirt defiantly reads “fuck.”

I was amazed to discover that one or two heavy users have taken over the English-speaking component of an entire site.  They have taken the helm, leaving comments on most new posts and filling the message boards with vitriol.  They set the tone for current users and quickly get new users into line – but the new line is grouchobeer’s.

Gnomz.com is a site with, effectively, no moderation.  It is self-policing – but it’s not a friendly atmosphere, and it has gone completely off-message.

Conclusion
So, what would happen if The-N.com relaxed or removed its moderation?  It would probably be less safe, but more exciting.  It would be self-policing – because it would have to be.

I’ll bet the first thing they would do would be to stop talking about TV.

Emile Durkheim: The Rules of the Sociological Method, “What Is a Social Fact?”

• social facts are exterior to oneself; are received through education
  • they can exist without being applied at a given time
  • they are collective beliefs, tendencies and practices — even if each person enacts them differently
  • they are enforced through legal penalties or social ostracism

• social currents are situational: like mob mentality or the difference between seeing a movie in a theater vs. at home by yourself
  • they can be measured across a group using stats like birth, marriage, divorce and suicide rates
• two definitions
  • A social fact is any way of acting, whether fixed or ot, capable of exerting over the individual an external constraint.
  • A social fact is any way of acting which is general over the whole of a given society whilst having an existence of its own, independent of its individual manifestations.

John R. Searle: The Construction of Social Reality, “Creating Institutional Facts”

Characteristics of social and institutional facts

• they are often self-referential
  • money is anything we think of as money
  • a tool is anything that can be used as a tool
  • our belief in the phenomenon partially creates the phenomenon
• some social facts can be created by performative utterances
  • “The meeting is adjourned”
  • “I do.”
  • these utterances bring about the state that they express
  • they can also do more: when a leader declares a state of disaster, the area qualifies for state or federal aid
• institutional facts must be backed up by physical or brute facts
  • a knight in chess (or a dollar) means something specific but can take different forms
  • there must be some physical realization
• institutional facts exist in sets
  • to believe in money, you must believe in property
  • to believe in marriage, you must believe in contracts (and possibly in God)

Institutional facts are created by collective intentionality

• groups can behave with a single goal in mind, where each individual has an individual, constitutive goal
• collective imposition of function can lead to the creation of social facts
  • more than one person sits on a log, and eventually it is generally recognized as a bench
  • a wall acts as a boundary (even if it can be physically passed) because people work together to control passage back and forth
  • US currency is not redeemable for gold, but it is still money
• every time we enact or perform a social fact, we continue to create it as a fact

Constitutive rules: X counts as Y in C

• when a thing becomes something else in a specific context
  • killing, under certain circumstances, counts as murder, and murder counts as a crime punishable by death or imprisonment
• used when intrinsic properties don’t define the status change
  • a hunk of metal and plastic becomes a screwdriver when it’s made into a screwdriver
  • (a coin can be used as a screwdriver but that doesn’t make it a screwdriver)
  • a person becomes a doctor after undergoing schooling, training, and certification
  • a person’s status as doctor can be revoked if they violate certain codes
• institutional facts can be violated
  • counterfeiting money
  • pretending to be a doctor
  • (Durkheim talks about this in terms of the results: punishment or ostracism)

Olson: “The Life and Death of Jesse James” in LA Weekly

• Can you fall in love someone who does not exist?  What happens to that love after you learn they do not exist?
• Did Janna violate any laws?  What social rules did Janna violate?
• What are the consequences of this kind of mindfuck?  What if no one discovered that Janna was lying?  Would the emotional violation have been of the same level?