White supremacists, conspiracy theorists, and other extremists are weaponizing the space.
A new report by the Washington Post highlights the hate speech and extremists that can be found on the largely unmoderated social networking site, Spaces.
Extremist content is being disseminated via the social networking site, including conspiracy theories, and derogatory discussions about Muslims, Black Americans, and trans people.
The new built-in audio feature allows users to host live conversations with other users, where users can either listen-in or volunteer to take part in the discussion. The feature was first announced in 2020. The company began to roll out more users of the space.
According to the report, employee concerns about platform growth were pushed to the side, despite the fact that executives knew it would be easy for malicious actors to break the rules.
These issues exist in the online audio space as a whole. Real-time audio moderation technology is in its infancy. Users reporting prohibited content or human moderation listening to it is the only way audio moderation will work in the future.
Ensuring people's safety and encouraging healthy conversations, while helping hosts and listeners to control their experience, have been key priorities since the beginning of Spaces. We're exploring avenues in this regard, but it's not something we have available at the moment.
When the mobile audio platform blew up in popularity during the early months of the Pandemic, it faced similar issues. Far right extremists and terrorist groups were attracted to this new social platform.
It's built into a giant social media platform that already has hundreds of millions of regular users. It's possible to combine that with how the social network promotes Spaces, which puts live audio chats at the top of users' feeds. Extremists can easily target that many people.
All Spaces chats are temporarily saved for the purpose of moderation. If a user is reported, the company can refer to the recording and dole out punishments it deems necessary.
The fans of Twitter Spaces. It's a unique feature and I have heard positive feedback from other users. It's clear that there is a lot of work to be done in order to address its problems.
