A fully automated security service unlikely, says Microsoft
Along with Toulouse and Erickson, Jason Coon and Andreas Holbrook round out the management team, which includes numerous enforcement agents who work one of three shifts during the day to maximize coverage (together, they cover 18 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year). Coon manages the agents, and Holbrook works with outside companies and law enforcement agencies on deeper investigations.The team is tight-knit, primarily because of the kind of content and situations they deal with each day.
“There’s a sort of gallows mentality, because we do have to deal with some pretty bad stuff during the course of our day,” Erickson says. “We talk openly and frankly about it and the effect it has on all of us. You can’t help but need to talk after being exposed to the worst of the worst day in and day out.”
Sometimes this includes interacting with courts, law enforcement agencies, and other agencies. In one recent case, that included the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (MCMEC).
“That, of course, pushes a lot of buttons,” Erickson says. “We make sure people get the space and time they need after something particularly bad – to have a talk, or go outside and take a walk.”
The team also has some go-to “palette cleansers” to brighten things up: LOLcats, those cute and funny pictures of animals adorned with irreverent and witty (and almost exclusively grammatically incorrect) captions.
“Sites like ‘I Can Has Cheezburger’ and ‘The Daily Squee’ are frequently called upon around here,” Erickson says. “They do a lot to help. You sort of need that disconnection from the offensive content sometimes.”
As Xbox Live continues to expand, so too does the enforcement team and the effectiveness of their tool Vulcan. But Erickson doubts there will ever be a time that enforcement is totally automated.
“Most of the decisions need human eyes to keep it real, though we are moving into a realm where we’re applying more automation to the process,” Erickson says.
And what of this team whose sole mission it is to deal with “the worst of the worst” – what has it done for their views on humanity?
“I’ve learned that the vast majority of people on our service are out there having fun. We have a great community,” Toulouse says. “To the extent that we do see bad behavior, it’s often tied to the belief that they’re anonymous, they won’t get caught, and we’re not looking. The vast majority of people are out there are trying to be excellent to each other.”
Despite having seen the worst of people, Erickson, too, is still optimistic about people.
>o? “The reality of working in the wild, wild west of the internet is that most people just want to be creative, and to use our products in social ways and to connect to people. And for the ones that don’t, well, that just requires a bit of tweaking. We’re slowly crumbling the nexuses of bad behavior.”
