Moderation

The Hub

Moderation will be done on a server by server level, by the creators/hosts of the group. Hosts can also assign admin roles to members of the community and delegate moderation duties to certain individuals within the server. These groups can set their own culture and code of conduct and self-govern their servers. Anyone joining these groups do so at their own discretion.

Within these messaging servers, if there is a grievous breach of code of conduct, users still have the capacity to report the incident/user for community-review (before the 'jury duty' panel) if they believe the perpetrator deserves more of a sanction than simply being removed from the messaging server in question.

Jury Duty - The model of moderation used by Waivlength

Waivlength gives each user the opportunity to opt-in for ‘jury duty’. Those signed up for jury duty have a dashboard attached to their profile that autofills with newly generated reports. Jurors review the report and give their verdict. A case is not closed until it reaches a consensus beyond a certain threshold.

All jurors are required to complete a brief induction while opting-in for jury duty to familiarise themselves with the terms of service, code of conduct and grading system. Jurors are given the option to grade misdemeanours according to four categories:

• 0 - No action - Report was unfounded and the accused does not see any penalty. The accuser of the unwarranted report is noted. Repeated unsubstantiated reports may impact negatively on the accuser through the platform’s social consensus protocol.

• 1 - Grade 1 - Minor breach of conduct, the offence is noted. Repeated Grade 1 infringements may start to impact negatively on the user through the social consensus protocol.

• 2 - Grade 2 - Moderate breach of conduct, the accused receives an alert to caution them for their actions and they are penalised by the social consensus protocol. Repeated Grade 2 infringements may escalate to a Grade 3.

• 3 - Grade 3 - Severe breach of conduct, the accused may receive a temporary suspension or permanent ban, depending on their previous disciplinary record. They are also penalised more severely by the social consensus protocol.

Process

When a piece of content is reported, the case is randomly assigned to the dashboard of three independent jurors. If the jurors all independently agree that no action is necessary and that the report was unfounded, the case is closed.

If, however, jurors disagree, the algorithm may present the case to more jurors until a majority decision is agreed upon. For low grade offences, a small number of jurors will be needed to reach consensus.

However, for higher grade breaches in conduct where the debate is between a grade 2 and grade 3 offence, more jurors will be recruited to deliver a verdict. The sanctions are higher here, so a higher threshold of consensus will be necessary.

How to uphold a fair jury?

We know from the history of the justice system that the fairest jury is one that represents a wide spectrum of age, gender, ethnicity, political beliefs and residence. An advantage of a platform-wide jury duty system is how it can use AI-driven engines to create a diverse jury for each case. When opting-in for jury duty, users will answer some of these general questions. This will help to eliminate bias from the decision-making process.

A common concern in decentralised models of governance is the lack of an incentive structure for community members to report accurately or to opt-in for jury duty in the first place. With nobody overseeing their actions, how can we be sure jurors won’t abuse the system? There needs to be an appropriate incentive system and also a penalty for those who try to game the system.

Waivlength has its WAIV token for this. Reserving a pool of token rewards for jurors is an obvious way to incentivise users to take part in community moderation efforts. Linking financial incentives to unbiased, honest reporting may not seem to be the perfect solution. Will that lead to a situation where those who are wealthy (and hence don't need financial rewards) simply do as they please, and those who desperately need the money try to game the system to maximise their income? This is why a two-pronged approach is necessary.

Jury duty would also need to incorporate a protocol for penalising jurors who are consistently found on the wrong side of the verdict. A protocol like this has precedent - Yup.io. Yup is a web extension which allows users to earn financial rewards via tokens for rating social media content across multiple platforms. The Yup protocol is a social consensus run on a curator economy. Users are rewarded by how closely their rating relates to the average.

If a protocol rated jurors based off of how their verdict compared with the final verdict, it would be able to reward accurate jurors and present them with more cases and financial rewards (like a multiplier effect) while simultaneously penalising those who regularly reside on the wrong end of the verdict and presenting them with less cases. Waivlength has a Social Consensus protocol designed to implement this and link a user’s rating to the token rewards they will earn.

As additional features are added to Waivlength in the future (eg. A public Feed), this jury duty mode of governance will see more use and become more important.