Social Media's kangaroo court and censorship: A Reviewer's confessions

Abstract

This autoethnography explores the use of censorship as a consequential function of social media moderation. Reflections on my time as a community reviewer for a social media platform focus on censorship processes observed on a geographically-based social media platform, OurStreet (a pseudonym). I discovered that censorship occurs through mechanisms that permit subjective overreach of aggressive tactics that create marginalized perspectives and users. Implications focus on the consequences of kangaroo courts within social media platforms.

Keywords

• Social media
• Censorship
• Digital autoethnography
• Online community
• Kangaroo courts