Lydia Laurenson Polarisation and Peacebuilding Strategy on Digital Media Platforms: Current Strategies 15 this brief include the conversational interventions designed by Build Up and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. However, moderation is not usually perceived as a technical intervention — or an easily scalable one. It is also highly variable, and its results depend a lot on the personalities and goals of the moderators. The major platforms invest very little in conversational moderation, with the exception of Reddit, whose structure depends on empowering thousands of community moderators. 6. Derecommend The platform continues to host the content, but restricts or slows down its reach. Examples include Facebook’s viral slowdowns, or Youtube’s changes to its recommendation algorithm such that conspiracy theories are recommended less. Renee DiResta’s concept that “Free Speech Is Not The Same as Free Reach” is useful here: Promoting content by recommending it or enabling it to go viral is arguably a stronger action than merely allowing the content to exist. On the platform level, recommendations are perhaps the clearest analogy to the “editorial judgment” that an editor at a newspaper or magazine would exercise. In this sense, it seems that recommendation and derecommendation should be left largely to a given platform company’s preference, just as editorial judgment is left to editors. 7. Demonetise The platform continues to host the content, but does not allow it to make money on the platform. Facebook and Youtube both do this to content that violates their monetisation guidelines, and it seems best considered as a different form of “derecommending” — or editorial judgement — even if we do not agree with all the content they decide to recommend or monetise (or derecommend or demonetise). 8. Debunk The platform continues to host the content, but shows users an alternative narrative. Examples include Jigsaw’s Redirect Method. This is relatively uncontroversial when applied to topics like showing anti-extremist videos when users search for extremist keywords. But it would be far more controversial and problematic if Google employees decided to debunk, say, the concept of God in Google search. 9. Deindex The platform makes it hard or impossible to search for the content, but continues to host the content (assuming it hosts content — Facebook, Pinterest, and Youtube all host content, for example, but Google generally does not). Examples include Google restricting autocomplete on queries that could lead to hate speech, or any platform making it impossible to search for certain queries. Deindexing and banning (below) start to edge into truly uncomfortable territory for a democracy. 10. Ban The platform takes down the content. All content-hosting platforms have ways to do this, but not all their policies are the same. While, to some extent, this could be considered similar to editorial judgment, it becomes questionable once a platform is so widely used that it is practically a utility. For example, if a trans person’s Facebook profile is taken down because she is not using her birth name on her profile (and it is therefore in violation of Facebook’s “Real Name policy”), then she could plausibly lose her chance at getting a job — employers are increasingly asking to see Facebook accounts as a condition of employment, as the