Sociotechnical Scale| Scaling Down to Scale Up? When Less Moderation Claims to Protect More

Abstract

In January 2025, Meta announced sweeping changes to its content moderation practices: replacing fact-checkers with community oversight, simplifying speech-related policies, and refocusing resources on “high-severity” violations. Drawing on Anna Tsing’s (2012) nonscalability theory, this article examines how these changes attempt to transform the inherently relational nature of content moderation processes into discrete, manageable,  and ultimately scalable  units. It identifies three contradictions in Meta’s scalability project: how community-based moderation and increased political content create tensions between truth and engagement; how categorizing content into “high” and “low” severity disregards interconnected harm ecosystems; and how geographic relocation and regulatory resistance introduce governance volatility that undermines consistent application of safety standards. This analysis shows how platform governance projects pursuing scale through standardization can paradoxically exacerbate the harms they claim to address, fragmenting rather than sustaining coherent safety frameworks.