“Inversoft’s software understands and analyzes how users communicate with each other, a tremendous value to our customers,” said Amy Pritchard, CEO of Metaverse Mod Squad. “In the hands of our community managers and moderators, this information not only makes us more efficient in stopping inappropriate conduct, but also allows us to channel back a wealth of information about the preferences, behaviors, and motivations of the community. These are incredible tools built by an exceptional company.”
It’s hard for me to grasp how many myths of the web this shatters or what it says about online culture. If they told me this was only being applied to the New York web scene, I might understand it, but as a much needed way to both moderate/control and harvest human behavior across the board?
T-Bone Burnett is right about this medium being cold except that the wires are just wires. All it can really be is a communications amplifier and the collective message from its users has become such that it also has to be a nanny and a snitch. Just as TV went from the great teacher to the subculture pimp, the web devolved in less than two decades from the library of Alexandria to pulp fiction.
And the technology isn’t the reason. The people using it are.
