Community Signal

Hosted by Patrick O'Keefe

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Aug 2025

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Community Signal is a podcast for experienced online community professionals, including those working in audience engagement, association management, developer relations, moderation, trust and safety, and more. It's released every two weeks and hosted by industry veteran Patrick O'Keefe. This is a very community-focused program. There are plenty of social media and marketing podcasts out there. That's not what this is. Social media is a set of tools. Community is a strategy you apply to those tools. Marketing brings new customers. Community helps you keep them.

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August 4, 202536 min

University of Zurich Researchers Conducted an AI Persuasion Experiment on Members of This Online Community, Without Consent

In March, the volunteer moderators of the Change My View subreddit learned that researchers at the University of Zurich had been covertly conducting an experiment on their community members. By injecting AI-generated comments and posts into conversations, the researchers had wanted to measure the persuasiveness of AI. There was one big problem: They didn't tell community members that they were being experimented on. They didn't tell the community moderators. They didn't tell Reddit's corporate team. Only when they were getting ready to publish, did they disclose their actions. It then became clear that beyond the lack of consent, they had engaged in other questionable behavior: Their AI-written contributions had spanned multiple accounts, pretending to be a rape victim, a trauma counselor focusing on abuse, a Black man opposed to Black Lives Matter, and more. Community response was swift: Overwhelmingly, members were unhappy. The moderators insisted the research not be published. Reddit threatened legal action. Initially, the researchers were defiant but eventually, they apologized and pledged not to publish the research. Change My View volunteer moderator Logan MacGregor joins the show to discuss what went on behind the scenes, plus: The danger of publishing the research Reaction to the apology How AI is going to challenge the idea of trusting an online community Big Quotes Blame the manipulators, not the members and moderators (1:49): "Manipulation in online communities has existed forever. What's happening with [AI is] the believability, the speed at which people can do it. … The fault always rests with the person who chooses to manipulate the community. It's easy to fool people … and to do something that undermines the trust of something. It's harder to build trust." -Patrick O'Keefe Why a promise not to publish was important (13:21): "From my perspective, I think the things that we wanted the most [from the researchers were] an apology and a promise not to publish. The second was really important because we were concerned that if this was published in a peer-review journal … if it was elevated to a prominent journal, that our community, which is supposed to be a protected human space, would now become just another sandbox for researchers. We felt very strongly that it should not be published. … Unfortunately, it didn't land well." -Logan MacGregor When a community leader stands for their community, they often stand for all communities (14:52): "When one community person – a volunteer, a host, a person in this line of work – stands up for their community, they stand up for all communities." -Patrick O'Keefe Just because bad comments exist online doesn't mean new ones won't cause harm (20:10): "So much of what [the researchers] did to try to prevent harm was to say 'comments like this happen all the time online, we don't think that it's going to cause individual trauma.' We kind of dispute that because some of the comments are [you] pretending to be a trauma counselor and maybe that could actually cause some harm. … I don't think they thought enough about community impact until after the community screamed 'ouch.'" -Logan MacGregor You can't just blame AI for this (22:52): "One thing that's really special about Change My View is that it's a human space; it's a decidedly human space. … The University of Zurich is a decidedly human space. What I think is so insidious about AI is it's caused people to behave in ways that I don't know we would have, without the stupid thinking machines. Because it's a toxic influence. Unlike the bots that are invading us daily, that we're constantly shutting down. … "That hurts a little bit more than just dealing with bots, because this wasn't just bots. These are people interacting with other people, and there was a human element there. The researchers are real people. I'm a real person. This happened between real people, and it wasn't just AI." -Logan MacGregor How did the community respond when the experiment was disclosed? (24:47): "I would say there was this collective outrage [from the community]. … It was a unique and singular violation of the ethos of the sub, and it was especially palpable because there are a lot of researchers and research-affiliated people that are fond of the sub. It seemed like: We protect national parks, and we have national monuments – these protected spaces – and it almost felt on that level. Of all the places to do this, why Change My View?" -Logan MacGregor Researchers can help online communities in this moment, but not if they can't be trusted (34:13): "One of the things that I worry about when it comes to AI is it's probably going to chip away … at this idea of having protected online spaces, because if in-person conversations are the only way that you can validate that you're not talking to a robot, then this thing that we created called the internet, it's going to cease to have value at all. "That's the fear, and I have hope that we're going to be able to figure out a way to get past that challenge, but I'm scratching my head as to how we would do that. The true tragedy in this whole piece is that the very people that I think are best equipped to help us navigate that space are now distrusted because of this experiment. We need to heal that, and I don't know how that's going to happen." -Logan MacGregor About Logan MacGregor Logan MacGregor is a member of the volunteer mod team on r/changemyview. Drawing from a unique blend of experience including social work, administration, program management, project management (including research-based projects), policy, strategic development, and emergency management, Logan is a credentialed Type 3 Planning Section Chief that is planning to complete the Master's program at the Center for Homeland Defense and Security, with a thesis likely focusing on information campaigns. Related Links Change My View subreddit, where Logan is a volunteer moderator Unauthorized Experiment on CMV Involving AI-generated Comments, the announcement made by the moderators revealing the existence of the experiment to the community Reddit slams 'unethical experiment' that deployed secret AI bots in forum by Vivian Ho for the Washington Post CMV AI Experiment Update – Apology Received from Researchers, an update posted by the moderators after researchers apologized Don't Create Fake Accounts on Your Community and Don't Lie to Your Members by Patrick, discussing how Steve Huffman taught students to create fake accounts in their online communities How MetaFilter's Founder (Successfully) Stepped Away From the Community After 16 Years, the Community Signal episode with the story of Scott Adams impersonating a Scott Adams fan 'Unethical' AI research on Reddit under fire by Cathleen O'Grady for Science Transcript View transcript our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email. Thank you for listening.

June 24, 202440 min

When Open Source Community Software is Bought by Private Equity

When private equity buys online community platforms, who wins? What about if those platforms were built on open source software? Does the company continue to be a good citizen of the open source community that helped build the product? History has shown us that it is often the community managers and pros who lose. They might not just lose a good platform though, they might lose their job. Lincoln Russell has an interesting perspective on this topic. He joined Vanilla Forums, an open source community software platform, as a senior developer in 2011, having already used it for a couple of years. He left the company in 2020, then the director of engineering. Lincoln has continued to use the software. Vanilla Forums was subsequently purchased by Higher Logic, a company lacking a meaningful history of open source contributions. As a matter of disclosure, both Higher Logic and Vanilla Forums are past sponsors of the show. Lincoln and I also discuss: How Vanilla Forums' open source ethos shifted over time The importance of data migration standards for community software Is community software best built by small businesses? Big Quotes Your community software provider must answer this (16:38): "The first question you should ask a [community software] vendor is: How easy is it to leave you? It's not a fun question to ask, but the answer is crucial to me. It's a deal-breaker question." -Patrick O'Keefe Some community platforms try to lock their customer data into the platform (18:07): "When [a client is] onboarding [to new community software during the] initial year or two, they don't care about their data export. It's at the end. That's a long-term reputational issue about how people talk about their experiences. We saw that with [community software] competitors. We had some trouble with a couple of competitors in trying to get the data from them and spent way more hours than particular customers were worth – just on principle, honestly – getting the data out for them because we were so personally offended. At least I was." -Lincoln Russell When you aren't selling community software to the people who will actually use it (20:37): "In the [community software] sales process, you identify stakeholders – people that are decision makers. A lot of the time they weren't a community manager. A lot of the time it was a director of technology, it was a CEO, or other positions, and that warps your roadmap. "When those are the people that [the] sales team [is] sitting in front of, day in and day out, and you're pitching an improved moderation queue, they want this button that does this thing. You're like, 'But that's stupid.' But it doesn't matter. If those are the people you're selling to, [with] their own idea of community that doesn't actually align with community management because they have internal business goals, and all they want to do are check those boxes." -Lincoln Russell Why community professionals should drive community platform choice (22:10): "Although I'd like to believe, ego-wise, that I could make a community out of whatever piece of garbage application you throw in front of me, I know the software can either help me or hurt me, and it's tough when you're making dinner with someone else's ingredients." -Patrick O'Keefe Great ideas need great communicators (23:44): "The biggest issue with charting a course is you need a really clear vision, and you also need someone who can articulate that vision a lot, and over and over again, to the right people in the right circumstances. You need an external marketer. All of us in engineering at Vanilla [were] all introverts. None of us were going to conferences and giving talks about our vision for community software. It just wasn't in us to do that. I think we were poorer off in that we had some really good ideas, and could have shifted the conversation a bit, but we didn't put our energy there because that was a lot of energy." -Lincoln Russell Protecting your culture makes you unique from the big social media platforms (33:43): "I think this idea of being more private and being very selective about what you present to the world, and having an internal culture that is protected from the internet – not promoted to the internet – is the future of these independent community spaces because that's the space those [bigger] platforms cannot touch." -Lincoln Russell Community drives great software projects (37:04): "To build great software, like the great software projects that are going to outlive me, you need a community of people committed to working on them for long periods of time. [You need] to replace those people when they leave, but you have to have a system to keep that going, not just like, [we] got great five minds in a room and they did a thing, and then they cash out at the end. That's not sustainable." -Lincoln Russell About Lincoln Russell Lincoln Russell is the vice president of engineering for uConnect, which builds virtual career centers for colleges and universities to help students get better jobs. Earlier in his career, he spent 8 and a half years at Vanilla Forums, starting as a senior developer in 2011 and leaving in 2020 as the director of engineering. Related Links Lincoln's website Higher Logic Vanilla, from Higher Logic uConnect, where Lincoln is vice president of engineering Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com WordPress.org, the home of the WordPress open source community Arlington-Based Higher Logic Acquires Montreal's Vanilla by Richard Foster for Virginia Business Nitro Porter, Lincoln's community platform migration tool Lincoln's blog post announcing Nitro Porter Matt Mecham of Invision Community Matt Mecham on Community Signal Transcript View on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email. Thank you for listening.

January 22, 202456 min

When an Online Community Pro Retires

Rebecca Newton is a legend of the online community profession. After 30 years, she has retired. But what does it mean when we retire from this work? Her career began AOL in 1994, building communities and managing a massive volunteer program. Among her numerous stops, Rebecca found a focus in child safety, leading such efforts for Sulake (the company behind Habbo Hotels and Disney's Virtual Magic Kingdom), Mind Candy (Moshi Monsters), and most recently SuperAwesome, a provider of tools for safer, responsible digital engagement with young people, who was acquired by Epic Games. A program manager for community in 1997, a community director in 2001, a chief community officer in 2007: Rebecca has held all of the titles. Along the way, she has paved a path for the community profession, pushing us higher in corporate environments and creating valuable resources for us. Most notably, her 24 year stewardship of the e-mint listserv for community pros, an iconic resource that has helped countless community facilitators. After such a career, what's it like to step away from full-time work? What goes through the mind of a retiring community pro? That's what we'll discuss, plus: How do you prepare for retirement, as a community pro? What will Rebecca miss? What won't she miss? The least and most effective pieces of legislation passed during Rebecca's career Big Quotes What will Rebecca miss most about being a full-time community pro? (17:32): "I'm going to miss working with people online the most. It's a different animal than working with people offline, and I did plenty of that before I started in the online world. … Everybody thought they invented remote working. I've had remote teams since 1994, so it's not new. I'm going to really miss that because there's a special culture in the online world, as you know, that is really hard to describe, or it's hard for me to describe but is not like the offline world. It's like being in a special club, in a secret club. That's how it feels to me." -Rebecca Newton What won't she miss? (23:07): "I won't miss … people naively thinking they know better than everybody who built the widget. I've heard the conversations. 'Oh, they can't let go. They don't know how to let go. They don't know how to grow. They don't know how to do this.' Then I would think, 'Okay, well, we'll see who's not growing in a year, so I'm going to go looking for another job because I know in a year this thing's not going to exist.'" -Rebecca Newton The cyclical trend of online community obsession (31:09): "I remember in 2000 when dentists were [asking], 'Do I need an online community?' There was a trend of, "Oh, it's online community,' because of the success at AOL. I was like, 'No. You're a dentist.'" -Rebecca Newton Overreaction from government officials who aren't active online (34:21): "I'm not saying anything about how smart [government decision makers] are, about how great their intentions were, or their abilities in the world. [But] if you're not [active online], if you're not a heavy user, if you're not in the kid's world using it, how can you possibly [make good decisions]? That's what we see in Great Britain, in the EU. Something happens to one person under 16, they want to have 27 laws about it. Because this thing happened." -Rebecca Newton Kids want to collaborate, they want a job (38:40): "That's the biggest thing I learned about working with kids. The very first thing when they get online or game in an app, whatever it is, [they say] 'I want a job. Can I have a job? Let's do this together. Let's do that together.'" -Rebecca Newton When legislation goes too far (39:18): "Over-regulation is detrimental. I think all it does is create a whole lot of jobs for people to do a lot of stuff that nobody's ever going to look at. That's a really rude thing for me to say, but I believe that." -Rebecca Newton About Rebecca Newton Rebecca Newton has spent 30 years in the commercial internet industry. As head of digital trust and community, Rebecca led online community, online safety, moderation, engagement, and customer services efforts at SuperAwesome (of Epic Games) from 2015 to 2023. Prior to joining SuperAwesome, Rebecca worked at Mind Candy as the chief community & safety officer, serving over 140 million registered (young) users. From 2001 to 2007, she worked at Sulake (the company behind Habbo Hotels) as the global director of community for the world's largest teen virtual world site, spanning 24 countries. She began her online community career with America Online in 1994, where she wore many hats, and finally landed as the program manager for AOL's community leader program. Among her contributions to the discipline of online community, Rebecca co-founded VirComm, the London-based annual conference for online community professionals in 2011, and the e-mint community management listserv. She serves on boards and committees for numerous organizations, including AgeCheq, the Archewell Foundation, and DitchTheLabel.org. Related Links Rebecca's previous appearance on Community Signal Rebecca's website e-mint, a community management listserv that Rebecca has managed since 2000 AgeCheq, the Archewell Foundation, and DitchTheLabel.org, organizations that Rebecca provides guidance to eWorld, an Apple service that launched in 1994 and provided a community feature Michael Acton Smith, who was once Rebecca's boss The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, the Communications Decency Act, and Section 230, which were all pieces of legislation passed during Rebecca's career Virtual Magic Kingdom, an online game created by Disney and Sulake, where Rebecca led community and safety efforts Jenna Woodul, potentially the first person with the chief community officer title Jenna Woodul on Community Signal MIT's Scratch community, which is managed by someone that Rebecca has mentored, who was initially a member of one of the communities she was responsible for Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email. Thank you for listening.

July 24, 202339 min

Breaking: Online Community Consultant Discovers Brand New Concept (Again!)

Online community consultants aren't unlike consultants for any other area of work. Some are ethical, smart, and talented, and some aren't. Consultants also don't often make great guests for the show because they view it as yet another lead generational funnel for them to shout generalities into. But hopefully an exception is this episode with community consultant Jenny Weigle. On it, we discuss how being humble is often at odds with how many consultants promote themselves, as they place a certain importance on appearing authoritative and revelatory, even if that isn't actually correct in the context of the history of this work. Can you even be a community consultant or an online community resource if you haven't taken a concept pioneered 30 years ago and thrown your logo on it? We also discuss: An update on past guest Tim McDonald's quest for a liver donor Self-promotion by community consultants Community professionals do roadshows, but are they ever invited to roadshows by other departments? Big Quotes When consultants and resources claim general concepts (3:57): "I've seen plenty of [community] consultants and resources pop up over my 25 years and throw a logo on something. The commitment curve, the activity ladder, the mountain of progression… how many different upward-facing shapes can we throw a logo on? I've seen a lot of that, and I've seen people claim something that has either been claimed decades ago or no one should be laying claim to." -Patrick O'Keefe How much of the talk in community work is brand new? (6:01): "There are very few things that happen in our field today that make me pause and say, 'Wow,' either to myself or out loud. When I'm putting out my materials and what I'm personally working on, I'm just doing what's top of mind and mainly it's influenced by what my clients need at the time." -Jenny Weigle The danger AI poses to community creativity (15:19): "[With ChatGPT and similar AI tools,] I'm worried about elements of communities where creativity is usually needed. An easy example is the writing of content, the writing of posts, the writing of conversations, and how those things start. I'm worried about everyone sounding the same. I'm worried about everyone getting the same prompts. I'm worried about everyone rewriting their posts using the same tool that learns on the same data set, and will all move them closer to the same center. Ultimately, that's the death of community." -Patrick O'Keefe Why community pros should read hospitality books (26:05): "There were so many things [that community builders can learn from the hospitality industry]. I was in awe as I turned each page of Danny Meyer's book because he paid so much attention to wanting to know his customer's preferences, their likes, dislikes, what was relevant going on in their lives at the moment, what would bring them in the door, and what would keep them from coming. These are all things that community managers are concerned about with their online communities, as well." -Jenny Weigle About Jenny Weigle Jenny Weigle has been creating, executing, and reviewing strategies for online communities for more than 10 years. She's worked with more than 100 brands on various aspects of their community strategy and implementations, including launch, migration, programming, and planning. These brands include, Airbnb, Google, HP, Intuit, Pinterest, REI, Samsung, Sephora, Splunk, Stubhub, and Visa. When she's not geeking out on community strategy, Jenny spends time in Los Angeles with her partner, John, and stepdaughter. In her personal life, she is a proud member of a number of communities, including Southern California Gator Club, Spiritual Sisters of Los Angeles (which she founded), Oak Park LA (for CrossFit), Sofar Sounds, and D23: The Official Disney Fan Club. Related Links Jenny's website Tim McDonald on Community Signal Good news from Tim! TimsLiver.com Jenny's Substack The Hospitality Books That Made Me a Better Community Professional by Jenny Danny Meyer's book, Setting the Table TV shows that deal with hospitality and customer service: Hotel Impossible, Bar Rescue, Kitchen Nightmares, and The Profit The 2-Hour Cocktail Party by Nick Gray Be Our Guest by The Disney Institute with Theodore Kinni Jenny's Community Roadshow template Jenny on LinkedIn Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

May 1, 202327 min

Kinks vs. Crimes and Gender-Inclusive Content Moderation at Grindr

Bodies aren't moderated equally on the internet. Content moderation efforts, especially those at large, mainstream platforms, can suffer from policy-based bias that results in moderation centering a cisgender gaze. This reinforcing of heteronormativity can leave some of your most vulnerable community members – and potential community members – feeling alienated, ostracized, and simply unwelcome. Last year, in her role as CX escalations supervisor at Grindr, Vanity Brown co-authored a whitepaper, Best Practices for Gender-Inclusive Content Moderation. Insightful, with a straight forward approach to making content moderation just a bit better, I found that it was also a validation of good, thoughtful moderation that has been going on for a long time. Vanity joins the show to talk about these efforts, which are tempered by a realistic acknowledgement of the limitations of this work, and how our need to be in other places (like app stores) can often slow down the progress we'd like to make. We also discuss: Why it's not our job to guess the gender of our members The state of AI trust and safety tools ChatGPT, Midjourney, and how much to worry about them Big Quotes How bodies are moderated differently online (2:16): "We want folks to express themselves and their sexuality joyfully, without judgment. Of course, without any harm. But what does that look like? … There traditionally are [community] guidelines for females and guidelines for males, but the world is changing and folks are becoming more in tune with who they are, and we want to be able to treat them equally and let folks, especially I emphasize our trans users, who are uploading photos … and if they are showing the top, then they're considered a woman if they have female-presenting breasts versus male. There are just a lot of nuances there that we saw as we were moderating content from a community who is very fluid with their gender expression." -Vanity Brown When do kinks create a moderation issue? (6:38): "[Kinks vs. crimes get] sticky when the kink looks like a crime. … Everything is about sex and kinks at Grindr. With this mass of kinky stuff, which of these things are harmful? I often echo that, in my work, I'm always driven … to do no harm. At the end of the day, are we harming someone? … Do we have a responsibility to protect them and keep them safe? As we continue to build trust with the community, we have to realize that folks are adults, too." -Vanity Brown Empathy sits at the core of good moderation (14:38): "If you can't be empathetic for the things you are not … then you're not really doing good thoughtful community moderation, trust and safety work. … Ultimately, if you want to be truly great at this work, you have to protect the people who aren't you." -Patrick O'Keefe What can community pros learn from dating apps? (24:23): "[Community, moderation, trust, and safety pros] can learn from dating apps on the level of how personal and sensitive dating apps are in the content you're sending back and forth. Folks using dating apps, a lot of times their heartstrings are attached, and their heartstrings are attached on a dating app, but not necessarily Amazon or shopping at Macy's. … It's just important to look at folks with a microscope and treat them with kindness as those in dating apps hopefully are doing when they're handling their customers." -Vanity Brown About Vanity Brown Vanity Brown is the CX escalations supervisor for Grindr, where she has worked in trust and safety for over 2 years, following more than 7 years at eHarmony. Vanity manages an escalations team of specialists devoted to handling the most complex cases that come through Grindr's support channels. Related Links Vanity on LinkedIn Grindr, where Vanity is CX escalations supervisor Best Practices for Gender-Inclusive Content Moderation whitepaper, co-authored by Alice Hunsberger, Vanity, and Lily Galib, which I found via Juliet Shen Grindr's community guidelines OpenAI's efforts to identify AI-generated text, which were only able to identify "likely" AI-written text 26% of the time, a bit more than the approximately 10% I mentioned during the show Love Light Community, a youth choir founded by Vanity, dedicated to "enriching the lives of youth and families in underserved communities through the transforming power of music and the arts" Love Light Community on Instagram Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

March 27, 202330 min

Safeguarding a Diabetes Charity Community and Knowing if You've Done the Right Thing

Safeguarding is a term used in Ireland and the United Kingdom that covers efforts to protect the health, wellbeing, and human rights of people, especially children and those who are otherwise vulnerable. At Diabetes UK, four people alternate by week as the safeguarding lead, helping to protect those that the charity comes in contact with. One of them is Josh Poncil, the online community and learning manager. Among his responsibilities is Diabetes UK's online forum. On this episode, we talk about safeguarding and knowing if you've done the right thing at the end of the day, plus: What is considered "too technical" for the average member to answer in a diabetes community? How Josh writes for a vulnerable audience Moderation decisions that could trigger a meltdown Big Quotes When veteran members go bad (18:39): "[After 25 years in content moderation,] I really believe that the most stressful situation is when an experienced member takes a turn for the worst. … It's painful because they are an example to other people in the community. Especially new members who see their posts and say, 'That member has this number of contributions and has been in the community this long. If they [post] that and it's up still, that's probably how this community behaves.'" -Patrick O'Keefe An example of safeguarding in an online community (23:43): "I had someone on the forum saying, 'I've just been diagnosed a couple of weeks ago. I've barely eaten.' That's like an alarm ringing bells in my head. I'll take the lead and private message them. … 'Is everything okay? Could you please contact the helpline or tell us what's going on?' "Let's say they got back to me saying, 'Yes, I haven't eaten anything. I don't feel well. I feel dizzy.' Then I'll contact back, 'Do you need me to call an ambulance?' Sometimes they'll go back to me, 'Yes, here's my address, my telephone number.' I'll ring [the emergency service] 999. I have to be careful what I say at the beginning because of my accent. I'm American, but I live in London. I have to make sure I'm not coming off as a scam. I'm calling from a charity. I have a safeguarding concern." -Josh Poncil With safeguarding, you regularly are questioning if you did the right thing (24:53): "I've had someone on the forum saying, 'My mom is in quite a worrying state. She's scared to go to the hospital. She's dizzy, she's not coherent. I'm scared she hasn't been testing for blood sugars.' On my end, I've contacted the daughter, 'Please get your mom to [Accident and Emergency]. It sounds like she needs medical attention.' They've got back to me, 'Thank you for getting in touch, but my mom didn't make it.' This affected me, and it hit me quite hard not knowing if I did the right thing. I have to just take a moment of, 'Did I make the right choice? Is there anything else I could do at this time?'" -Josh Poncil About Josh Poncil For the last 4 years, Josh Poncil has been the online community and learning manager for Diabetes UK, after a stint at Blood Cancer UK. He went to school for creative writing and journalism, before transitioning to community by way of social media management. Related Links Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers Josh on LinkedIn Diabetes UK, where Josh is online community and learning manager Diabetes UK's online forum Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

January 23, 202338 min

Empowering Employee Resource Group Leaders With Your Internal Community Platform

Employee resource groups (ERGs) can do a lot to create a greater sense of belonging at your organization. But the folks who volunteer to lead these groups may find themselves in need of help when it comes to utilizing perhaps the greatest tool at their disposal: Your internal employee community platform. As a community strategist within large organizations, Lori Harrison-Smith has trained employees to help them get the most out of these platforms. She has also managed two large migrations, both from Jive, and that has led her to have a (in her words) cynical perspective on the resources made available for these migrations, by both companies and the software vendors themselves. Lori and Patrick discuss: Doing something for an employee vs. showing them how to do it themselves How much the ERG leaders she's worked with have dipped into moderation The short timeframes given to internal community migrations Big Quotes What's really driving an internal community migration deadline (22:59): "When [an internal employee community] migration is happening, [companies are often] trying to save some money while they're at it, and they've got this deadline. It's usually a contract signature that is driving that deadline. There's never enough time. It's like, 'We need to get off of this because the contract expires in November.' It's May when we're having this conversation because that's when everybody started looking at the balance sheet." -Lori Harrison-Smith Instead of adjustments to their platforms, vendors can push "change management" (31:52): "With the different [internal community] vendors I've worked with, I've always had great relationships with them. The people have always been great and nice, but there's just these struggles as a community manager because I'm hearing what the employees are saying. I'm hearing them talk about the pain points they're experiencing. Then you go back to the vendor, and a lot of it is, 'Well, change management. You just got to get them used to this new system.'" -Lori Harrison-Smith The downside of big dollar value community software contracts (33:57): "Maybe [the consolidation in the community software space is] a case for lower-cost platforms and open source solutions that may seem a little harder upfront but ultimately allow you to be a little more nimble internally as opposed to the sunk cost that makes you feel like you're in a relationship you could never leave because you need to get that money back out of it." -Patrick O'Keefe About Lori Harrison-Smith Lori Harrison-Smith's career began in advertising, where she worked as a copywriter and editor. She found her real passion, though, when she transitioned to a role where she launched and supported an 8,000-strong employee community. Since 2011, Lori has held community roles within large organizations, leading platform updates and migrations, developing content and engagement programs, advocating for user experience, and guiding and supporting employees around communication and knowledge sharing. She is currently the collaboration network manager at VMware, following community roles at Motorola Solutions and Steelcase. Related Links Lori Harrison-Smith on LinkedIn VMware, where Lori is the collaboration network manager Employee Resource Groups Create a Sense of Belonging, Foster Engagement by Stephen Miller for SHRM Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

January 9, 202346 min

The Chief Community Officer Hype Machine

As we celebrate Community Signal's 7th birthday, Patrick takes questions from Community Signal listeners and supporters in this first ever "Ask Patrick Anything" episode of the show. Questions include: If everything had worked with CNN+, what would community look like for the platform? Would you rather be a working community professional or a community consultant? Will we ever see community leaders in the C-suite as the norm? 2023 will be Patrick's 25th year of community work, so this is an opportunity to reflect on that passage of time. A lot has changed and, surprisingly, some things haven't. Joining Patrick to ask the questions and dig deeper is previous guest Jared Smith. They also cover: The early promise of CNN+'s Interview Club How community moderation tools have changed over the years Why community isn't special when it comes to the C-suite Big Quotes You have to commit to be successful with D2C products (11:55): "If you build interactive products and kill them after three weeks, it's hard to prove out anything. It's hard to build out loyalty. It's hard to build out a D2C product if you're not willing to commit." -Patrick O'Keefe The magic of the unexpected in media products (13:04): "I think there is something magical that can happen when you take some of the expected nature of television or media, of what we expect is going to happen, and you throw the consumer, the community, the members, the subscribers into that. You give them the freedom to make other things happen." -Patrick O'Keefe Operators drive moderator tool development more than platforms (22:24): "[When it comes to moderator tools], it's often the community of people who need something driving it more so than the platforms themselves." -Patrick O'Keefe Developers still focus on the frontend more than the administrative backend (23:35): "It's a cliché to say that software developers focus on the frontend and the user experience and not so much the admin and moderation experience. That's a cliché in our business. I think that is largely the case with some exceptions. Those exceptions tend to be people who have run communities themselves or who have a really good foundational understanding of the web from being in it for so long." -Patrick O'Keefe If you want to make a difference in moderator tooling, start with the communities that don't have money (23:58): "I get pitched by developers, and I always tell them that the way to make change in this industry is to make your product available to the people who don't have anything. The Fortune 500s of the world are always going to have money, and they're always going to have engineers. They can figure their way around problems and pay for solutions. Most communities, 99.9% of people, don't have any money. That's where you make change." -Patrick O'Keefe Artificial intelligence isn't a moderation panacea (24:36): "If you think about it [going back 25 years], forums are not dead and the mod tools are basically the same that we had. Remove user, close thread, things like that, a lot of that stuff. It's the same. I also don't think it's a bad thing. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. One of the things about these AIs is sometimes they get it really, really wrong in really offensive ways. You still need that human element to counter that." -Jared Smith Banning Andrew Anglin is not brave, it's obvious (27:09): "When [Elon Musk decides] to unban Andrew Anglin, who's arguably the most prominent real nazi on the internet, the founder of The Daily Stormer, the most prominent nazi publication on the internet [that makes Twitter a place I am less likely to engage]. … Andrew Anglin can join any platform I own and he'll be banned. That's not a brave thing. That's not a talking point or like, 'Wow, that's amazing.' It's obvious. It's not an amazing thing." -Patrick O'Keefe Hyping the chief community officer role isn't helpful (39:46): "We've seen these tweets that are like, 'Half of the Fortune 500 will have chief community officers in the next 10 years,' or '10% of this or all big companies or all the Fortune 100 or the future of companies will be a chief community officer.' It's all hype. It's all nonsense. For the most part, it's to encourage hype in our industry. I don't see it as healthy. I don't see it as good. I don't see it as aspirational. I don't see those people as friends or allies of the work." -Patrick O'Keefe Be wary of the hype (41:42): "I don't trust anyone who says chief community officers are the future of community, that there's going to be one at every big company. It's always hype. It's always because they have some financially-vested interest in community work proliferating in that way or at least sounding like your friend. They want to sound like they're in your corner or they're your ally because there is some financial incentive tied to that for them long-term." -Patrick O'Keefe About Jared Smith Jared Smith is a manager of software engineering at BoomTown in Charleston, SC, leading engineering teams and encouraging developer career growth, including a ten-year stint working on and eventually leading a team of engineers dedicated to implementing WordPress for real estate agent websites. In addition to BoomTown, Jared runs @chswx (shorthand for Charleston Weather) and the chswx.com blog, where he writes forecasts and disseminates National Weather Service alerts for the Charleston, SC metro area. Over nearly 15 years, @chswx has emerged as a key catalyst in the weather conversation, not only acting as a conduit for sending alerts but also for receiving reports in real-time, improving situational awareness for public, media, and NWS warning forecasters alike. Related Links Jared Smith, our guest host BoomTown, where Jared is manager of software engineering Charleston Weather (including @chswx on Twitter), a project that Jared runs Wesley Faulker's appearance on Community Signal Wikipedia page for CNN+, the streaming service Patrick helped launch A clip from the Interview Club interview with Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Dr. Anthony Fauci Bassey Etim on LinkedIn, who has been on several Community Signal episodes Mastodon, free, open source decentralized social media platform Ryan Hall, a weather YouTuber Brad Williams' appearance on Community Signal Invision Community and Discourse, two community software options recommended by Patrick ChatGPT Community Signal episode covering Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter COPPA, Children's Online Privacy Protection Act DMCA, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

November 21, 202255 min

Elon Musk's Quest to Make Twitter Worse

Elon Musk's presence has loomed over Twitter since he announced plans to purchase the platform. And for these few weeks that he's been in charge, many concerns have proven to be justified. Musk laid off 3,700 employees, and then 4,400 contractors. He is firing those who are critical of him. The verification process, perhaps one of Twitter's most trusted features, has been unraveled. He's offered severance to those who don't want to be part of "extremely hardcore" Twitter. Following the results of a Twitter poll, he reinstated the account of Donald Trump, who was suspended from the platform for his role in inciting the January 6th attacks. So, what happens now? What of the many social movements that manifested on Twitter? While some movements and followings may see new manifestations on other platforms, not everything will be completely recreated. For example, as writer Jason Parham explains, "whatever the destination, Black Twitter will be increasingly difficult to recreate." In this episode of Community Signal, Patrick speaks to three experts: Sarah T. Roberts, associate professor in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA, trust and safety consultant Ralph Spencer, and Omar Wasow, assistant professor in UC Berkeley's Department of Political Science and co-founder of BlackPlanet, about the current state and future of Twitter. They dissect the realities facing the platform today including content moderation, loss of institutional knowledge, and uncertainty about Twitter's infrastructure, but also emphasize the importance of Twitter as a social utility for news and more. This episode also touches on: The reality of moderating a platform like Twitter What platforms actually mean when they say they're for "free speech" How Musk tanked the value of verification on Twitter Big Quotes On the future of content moderation at Twitter (8:28): "There's no way possible with the cuts [Musk has] made that he's going to be able to do any type of content moderation. … [He] isn't going to have anybody who remotely begins to know to how to do that [legal compliance and related work]." –Ralph Spencer Sarah T. Roberts' moderation challenge for Elon Musk (11:19): "I want Elon Musk to spend one day as a frontline production content moderator, and then get back to this [Community Signal] crew about how that went. Let us know what you saw. Share with us how easy it was to stomach that. Were you able to keep up with the expected pace at Twitter? Could you … make good decisions over 90% of the time, over 1,000, 2,000 times a day? Could you do that all the while seeing animals being harmed, kids being beat on, [and] child sexual exploitation material?" –@ubiquity75 Bumper sticker wisdom doesn't make good policy (15:46): "Everything [Musk has said about free speech] has had the quality of good bumper stickers but is totally divorced from reality, and that doesn't bode well, obviously." –@owasow The responsibility in leading a social media platform (19:41): "One thing that we are seeing in real-time [at Twitter] is what a danger there is in having one individual – especially a very privileged individual who does not live in the same social milieu as almost anyone else in the world – one very privileged individual's ability to be the arbiter of … these profoundly contested ideological notions of something like free speech which again is continually misapplied in this realm." –@ubiquity75 Musk's peddling of conspiracy theories (20:29): "[Musk is] running around tweeting that story about Nancy Pelosi's husband, the false article about what happened between him and his attacker. What kind of example is that to set? … What it is to me is like this kid who has way too much money, and he found a new toy he wants to play with." –Ralph Spencer Leading with humility (21:23): "[If you're running a site like Twitter,] you have to have a 'small d' democratic personality, which is to say you really have to be comfortable with a thousand voices flourishing, a lot of them being critical of you, and that's not something that you take personally." –@owasow There are always limits on speech (23:50): "When you declare that your product, your site, your platform, your service is a free speech zone, there is always going to be a limit on that speech. … [CSAM] is the most extreme example that we can come up with, but that is content moderation. To remove that material, to disallow it, to enforce the law means that there is a limit on speech, and there ought to be in that case. If there's a limit on speech, it is by definition not a free speech site. Then we have to ask, well, what are the limits, and who do they serve?" –@ubiquity75 "Free speech" platforms are not a thing (25:25): "When I hear people invoke free speech on a for-profit social media site, not only does that not exist today, it never has existed, and it never will exist. Let's deal with what reality is actually giving us and talk about that instead of these fantasies that actually are pretty much not good for anyone involved." –@ubiquity75 The social weight and trust that verification brought to interactions on Twitter (32:52): "[Twitter] has outsized social impact, whether it's in the political arena, whether it's in social movements, whether it's in celebrity usage, all of these things have been true. In terms of political movements, the good, bad, the ugly. We saw an insurrection against the United States launched by the President of the United States on Twitter, so it's not all rosy, but the point is that Twitter had this outsized power and part of that could be attributed … to this verification process that let a lot of high profile folks, prominent individuals, media organizations, other kinds of people in the zeitgeist or in the public eye, engage with a certain sense of security." –@ubiquity75 How does Twitter sustain its infrastructure amidst the mass layoffs and resignations? (39:18): "We have good reason to fear that [Twitter's] infrastructure is going to get considerably worse over time. [Musk has] fired enough of the people. … In a lot of ways, [Twitter is] like a telephone company. It's got a lot of boring infrastructure that it has to maintain so that it's reliable. [Musk has] taken a bunch of these pillars or blocks in the Jenga stack and knocked them out, and it's a lot more wobbly now." –@owasow Musk's Twitter user experience is not the common one (48:23): "[Musk is] obsessed with bots and spam, but why is that such a compulsion for him? Well, he has 100-plus million followers, and when he looks at his replies, there's probably a lot of bots and spam there. That's not where I live because I'm a civilian. His perspective is distorted in a way partly by the investment around him but partly also by just being so way out of proportion to almost any other human on Earth." –@owasow About Our Guests Omar Wasow is an assistant professor in UC Berkeley's Department of Political Science. His research focuses on race, politics, and statistical methods. Previously, Omar co-founded BlackPlanet, an early leading social network, and was a regular technology analyst on radio and television. He received a PhD in African American Studies, an MA in government, and an MA in statistics from Harvard University. Ralph Spencer has been working to make online spaces safer for more than 20 years, starting with his time as a club editorial specialist (message board editor) at Prodigy, and then graduating to America Online. During his time at AOL, he was in charge of all issues involving Child Sexual Abuse Material or CSAM. The evidence that Ralph and the team he worked with in AOL's legal department compiled contributed to numerous arrests and convictions of individuals for the possession and distribution of CSAM. He currently works as a freelance trust and safety consultant. Sarah T. Roberts is an associate professor in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA. She holds a PhD from the iSchool at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her book on commercial content moderation, Behind the Screen, was released in 2019 from the Yale University Press. She served as a consultant, too, and is featured in the award-winning documentary The Cleaners. Dr. Roberts sits on the board of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, was a 2018 Carnegie Fellow, and a 2018 recipient of the EFF Barlow Pioneer Award for her groundbreaking research on content moderation of social media. Related Links Elon Musk takes control of Twitter and immediately ousts top executives (via NPR) Omar Wasow's website Omar Wasow on Twitter BlackPlanet.com, founded by Wasow Ralph Spencer on LinkedIn Sarah T. Roberts' website Sarah T. Roberts on Twitter Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media, by Sarah T. Roberts Note from Patrick: After 5 years, this is Carol's final episode as editorial lead on Community Signal. We'll miss you, Carol! The Twitter Rules Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace by Lawrence Lessig Elon Musk says Twitter will have a 'content moderation council' (via The Verge) Democratic U.S. senators accuse Musk of undermining Twitter, urge FTC probe (via Reuters) We got Twitter 'verified' in minutes posing as a comedian and a senator (via The Washington Post) How Much Did Twitter's Verification Chaos Cost Insulin Maker Eli Lilly and Twitter Itself? (via Gizmodo) Patrick's (somewhat sarcastic) Twitter thread about the policies he hoped the platform would put in place to address Musk's conflicts of interest Saturday Night Live's content moderation council sketch Transcript View on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

October 24, 202232 min

When Community is on 3 Teams in 5 Years

As Zendesk's customer base and product offerings have grown, so has its community. The Zendesk community started in 2008, under the support organization, as a space for people to ask and answer questions about using the product. Since then, it has shifted departments multiple times, leading to changes in KPIs and core purpose. Nicole Saunders, the company's director of community, joins the show to explain how she has navigated these challenges. Tune in for her approach on thoughtfully managing change and expectations within your community and inside of your organization. Patrick and Nicole also discuss: Why the comments are open on Zendesk's knowledge base articles You can't tell people to contact support in Zendesk's community Handing some conversations in the community off to other teams Big Quotes Going from scrappy to resourced as your community team grows and develops (04:36): "[While community was part of the support organization,] we were functioning very scrappy, very much like a startup team within a larger organization. … Being within [the] integrated marketing organization let us connect to a lot more pieces and parts of the business, which as we built our strategy became increasingly important." –@NicoleinMadison Participate in the community you serve (14:20): "I'm always encouraging my team to [step] out of the ticket queue on a regular basis … and just wander around [the community] and try to have that same experience as the end users to make sure we're not missing anything, make sure that the queue isn't keeping us in just a transactional space." –@NicoleinMadison Why you can't tell people to contact support in the Zendesk community (24:58): "We were getting a lot of people that were just saying, 'You should contact support for this,' and what it was doing was discouraging other users from jumping in and trying to help. A lot of these were questions that people could answer for one another, and … it was short-circuiting the community conversation." –@NicoleinMadison The knowledge and value that community can offer (26:17): "You're going to gain so much more out of talking to somebody [in the community] who has done what you are trying to do, than someone who knows what functionality you should use to try to do it. Even the best support agent in the world probably hasn't done exactly the thing that you're trying to do. There's actually a real benefit to talking to other users." –@NicoleinMadison About Nicole Saunders In over 12 years as a community professional, Nicole Saunders' experience has ranged from consulting to launching communities for startups to currently leading the community team at Zendesk. She's built communities across forums, social media, and offline. Her background also includes social media management, event production, communications, and freelance writing. Passionate about building community both in her work and in life, Nicole engages in several volunteer efforts, including mentoring for the Wisconsin Women's Network, singing with the Philharmonic Chorus of Madison, and teaching dance fitness classes. Related Links Nicole Saunders on LinkedIn Zendesk community Zendesk knowledge base Zendesk's community code of conduct Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.