Takes One To Know One

Honi Soit Qui Mal y Pense

A finger pointing at the reader.

I first learned about Dr. Thomas Radecki in the mid-1980s, when my grandmother became concerned that my Dungeons and Dragons hobby was going to unmoor me from reality and send me spiraling into delusion and misery, ending in murder.

Radecki was the psychiatrist who testified that the teenager Darren Molitor had murdered another teenager, Mary C. Towey, because he had been driven mad by D&D. Though the court rejected his testimony, Radecki built a career on his willingness to give expert testimony to the effect that young people were being driven to ghastly crimes by D&D.

I forgot about Radecki for decades, and then, last week, I learned that he had lost his medical license following revelations that he had enticed his patients — young people seeking treatment for addiction — into trading drugs for sex. He impregnated one of them. He is now serving an 11–22 year prison sentence.

Radecki attained fame by falsely accusing others of victimizing vulnerable young people for profit. He went on to victimize vulnerable young people for profit.

Takes one to know one.

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Pluralistic: 12 Aug 2022


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Como Is Infosec

Content moderation is a security problem.

Cryteria, CC BY 3.0 (modified)/Crosa, CC BY 2.0 (modified)

in·fo·sec (/ˈinfōˌsek/): information security

co·mo (/koh-moh/): content moderation

Content moderation is really, really hard.

Content moderators:

  • seek to set conversational norms, steering transgressors toward resources that help them better understand the local conversational rules;
  • respond to complaints from users about uncivil, illegal, deceptive or threatening posts;
  • flag or delete material that crosses some boundary (for example, deleting posts that dox other users, or flagging posts with content warning for adult material or other topics);
  • elevate or feature material that is exemplary of community values;
  • adjudicate disputes about impersonation, harassment and other misconduct.

This is by no means a complete list!

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Pluralistic: 05 Aug 2022


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Pluralistic: 02 Aug 2022


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