Kamala, Coconuts & The Impossibility Of Content Moderation At Scale

I’ve spent many years trying to explain to people the impossibility of doing content moderation well at scale. I’ve created dozens of case studies on impossible decisions. I’ve made two separate video games about content moderation and trust & safety. I’ve written so so so many articles.

But I think I’ve now found just a perfect example, courtesy of a guy named Pete on Bluesky. And it’s about the use of the word “coconut.”

It's very funny that "coconut" is a campaign slogan in America and an arrestable offence in the UK www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home…

— Pete (@eyebrowsofpower.bsky.social) 2024-07-22T15:23:40.379Z

In the past couple of weeks, you might have heard about the association of Kamala Harris and coconuts. In short, in 2023, during some remarks at the White House, she said the following:

My mother used to — she would give us a hard time sometimes, and she would say to us, “I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people.  You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?”  (Laughs.) 

You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.

Some MAGA folks originally tried to take this clip and use it to make fun of Harris (one account claimed she was “obviously drunk” and dunking on her). Indeed, that video clip above is from the “GOP War Room” and was posted to mock Harris.

But something about the audio version of it resonated with people on TikTok. This included the mocking tone of Harris imitating her mother, followed by the laugh, and then the following “deep” sentence stated in a very serious tone. Many videos with Harris’ audio were made by people on TikTok. They often juxtaposed the pre-laugh mockery and the post-laugh seriousness, generally in support of the larger point that Harris was making. This point, ironically, the MAGA folks ignored regarding the importance of context.

Know Your Meme (as per usual) has the best summary of how it evolved from an attempted dunk on Harris to support for Harris. And, since Harris became the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee, supporters have embraced the coconut (or the coconut tree) as a symbol of the campaign.

The media has tried repeatedly (and often poorly) to explain all this.

However, Harris supporters are all in on “coconuts” as a symbol of the campaign.

But, as that skeet from Pete notes above, historically, “coconut” has been used in a much more derogatory fashion towards people of Indian descent who some feel are too assimilated into western culture. And, indeed, just a couple of months ago, a woman in the UK was charged with a “hate crime” for referring to two UK politicians, then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and then Home Secretary Suella Braverman, as “coconuts” on a sign at a protest.

And all of this gets to some of the difficulties not just in content moderation, but in trying to regulate “hate speech” as well.

Because, as always, context matters with a lot of this stuff. Or, I guess, as Harris says, “you exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.” And sometimes, a simple short phrase or a protest sign fails to take into account all of that context.

But, also, content moderation policies and “hate speech” laws may also fail to take into account that kind of context, or have any clear way of dealing with it. Indeed, it’s somewhat fascinating how the Harris quote was originally used (not necessarily in a bigoted fashion) to mock and attack Harris, yet was then embraced and adopted by her fans instead.

Context matters a lot. And context may change based on perspectives or who is speaking or why they’re speaking. Should anyone judging either of these situations have to know all of this history and context? For example, should content moderators be responsible for spending the necessary time to get up to speed with the history and context here? How would that possibly be scalable?

And all of that makes it a great example of how what many people always assume is straightforward (“just ban the hate speech”) always proves way more difficult in actual practice. Generally speaking, this is why enabling more free speech (including speech that condemns others for hateful speech) is so important, rather than demanding that it all be “policed” fully.

It’s totally reasonable to be concerned with how the word “coconut” is used in some contexts as a derogatory slur, but we should be careful about how we decide to respond to and handle that, there is… context in all of this.