Algorithmic Punishment: How Content Moderation Banishes Users to a Stochastic Penal Colony
By
Author: Robert Grimm
Summary
This academic paper (presented at the 2026 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency) revisits content moderation through a punitive lens, applying Foucault's penal system model to the algorithmic age. Rather than examining who gets moderated disproportionately, it focuses on how moderation punishes users unjustly while organizations act in self-serving ways. The paper introduces the concept of the "stochastic penal colony" — a liminal space between punishment as performance and punishment as discipline. It develops a novel methodology combining auto-ethnography with procedural justice analysis, applied to three case studies: pre-Musk Twitter's performative moderation, OpenAI's controlling moderation for DALL•E 2, and Pinterest's manipulative moderation. All three cases feature the threat of account suspension as banishment to this stochastic penal colony.
Source
bskyAlgorithmic Punishment: How Content Moderation Banishes Users to a Stochastic Penal Colonydl.acm.orgKey quotes
· 3 pulledit focuses on the punishment itself and explores the question of how content moderation treats users posting violative content unjustly, while the organizations doing the moderation act in a self-serving manner
this paper reworks Foucault's model of the penal system for the algorithmic age, restoring the penal colony as a figuratively liminal practice between punishment as performance and punishment as discipline
All three feature the pervasive threat of account suspension, which banishes users to the stochastic penal colony
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