Of Systems Thinking and Straw Men

Abstract

Professor Kate Klonick critiques Content Moderation as Systems Thinking by Professor Evelyn Douek for framing its approach — understanding the moderation of online content as through the dynamic and structural lens of “systems thinking” — as a superior alternative to the “standard” scholarly picture of content moderation. Specifically, Klonick argues that, while she fully supports this concededly ill-defined conception of systems thinking, the standard model to which it is contrasted does not exist; instead, Douek’s “ambitious and modest” approach is one that has been used consistently by scholars of online speech for decades. This misrepresentation, Klonick writes, misdiagnoses the problem. The “either-or” approach fails to recognize that focusing on both the forest and the trees is crucial to thinking about systems of content moderation, and it “undermines efforts to achieve the real-world accountability that Douek — and so many others — are ultimately after.”

Keywords: content moderation, online speech, governance, systems thinking, systems theory, communication theory, online speech law, internet law, new governors