Ask Slashdot: How Should User-Generated Content Be Moderated?

'I increasingly suspect that the days of large-scale public distribution of unmoderated user generated content on the Internet may shortly begin drawing to a close in significant ways...' writes long-time Slashdot reader Lauren Weinstein.

And then he shares 'a bit of history':
Back in 1985 when I launched my 'Stargate' experiment to broadcast Usenet Netnews over the broadcast television vertical blanking interval of national 'Superstation WTBS,' I decided that the project would only carry moderated Usenet newsgroups. Even more than 35 years ago, I was concerned about some of the behavior and content already beginning to become common on Usenet... My determination for Stargate to only carry moderated groups triggered cries of 'censorship,' but I did not feel that responsible moderation equated with censorship — and that is still my view today. And now, all these many years later, it's clear that we've made no real progress in these regards...
But as it stands now, Weinstein believes were probably headed to 'a combination of steps taken independently by social media firms and future legislative mandates.'
[M]y extremely strong preference is that we deal with these issues together as firms, organizations, customers, and users — rather than depend on government actions that, if history is any guide, will likely do enormous negative collateral damage. Time is of the essence.
Weinstein suggests one possibility: that moderation at scale 'may follow the model of AI-based first-level filtering, followed by layers of human moderators.'
But what's the alternative? Throngs of human moderators? Leaving it all to individual users? Limiting the amount of user-generated content? No moderation whatsoever?

Share your own thoughts and ideas in the comments. How should user-generated content be moderated?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.