The Atlantic Council’s Ministry of Truth is going to come for us before long:

The emergence and growth in popularity of federated social media services, like Mastodon and Bluesky, introduces new opportunities, but also significant new risks and complications. This annex offers an assessment of the trust and safety (T&S) capabilities of federated platforms—with a particular focus on their ability to address collective security risks like coordinated manipulation and disinformation.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/scaling-trust_annex5/

I’m somewhat familiar with the problems behind Trust & Safety, and this game depicts them well, although of course simplified.

You may also like https://novehiclesinthepark.com/ which shows how ridiculously hard it is to write a policy and/or enforce a policy consistently.

Whenever you see a bullshit decision from a tech company, remember those two games.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

These questions are less complex in a theoretical vacuum — but in this game, you have to maintain solid user growth, ad revenue, moderation speed and team morale.

And even if you can accomplish that, your CEO might lose confidence in you and give you the axe when you make a wrong choice regarding the fate of a provocateur named “BatDung” (yes, this happened to me).

Then, you’ll field requests from local law enforcement who want you to let a suspected murderer continue live streaming on Yapper so that the police can figure out where he’s located.

And if you can get through that mess, then you’ll have to figure out how to abide by changing international laws without turning over activists’ user data to authoritarian governments.

By the time you finish the game, you’re given the option to keep working at Yapper, start your own company, consult for the government, or go into an early retirement.

The game is difficult: in my first attempt, I was fired before we reached a series B, since my cautious moderation decisions deflated our user growth and ad revenue.

The original article contains 461 words, the summary contains 186 words. Saved 60%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

I played it and enjoyed it. The first time round I didn’t really know what I was doing in terms of game mechanics, just went by what I would do in that place, and my moderation speed fell to 0 so I lost.

Second time I managed to finish the game, with some compromises but not too awful.