Automating Common Sense: Content Moderation in Platform Capitalism

Abstract

This article reflects on the process of automating content moderation on social networks. To this end, the article is divided into two parts. The first section focuses on the political consequences of delegating the judgment of whether something is “publishable” to an algorithm. It is about understanding the political consequences of the automation process of what certain philosophical tradition has called “common sense.” The second part focuses on the eco-nomic–political dimension behind this automation process. From a critical (post-Marxist) methodology, we examine the relationship between labour and value that underlies this “automation of common sense.” From the perspective of a critique of political economy, it is suggested that the automation of content moderation depends on an appro-priation and exploitation of the “common”. In this sense, content moderation and automation serve as an exemplary case for analyzing the concepts of labour and value in the so-called “data extractivism” and “platform capitalism.”.