Releasing control - social media for class

I posted a question on the piazza tool about handling students who post immature or inappropriate content.  I recall when we used to use PollEverywhere in a lot of classes over a year. Students were likely polled, and polled, and polled. There came a point when students seemed to tired of responding to polls and got creative if given an open response option.  

In talking with faculty at my institution about the possibility of social media in their classes, I have noted two concerns.  First, the stated concern, is a general discomfort with using social media. Second, an observed concern, is loosing control of the classroom. 

Whether it be a change in physical space as had to be done some during the pandemic for social distancing or a change into the big Web 2.0 world, this makes sense to me. I believe the two are connected. Imaging walking into the classroom and the chairs are in disarray, pointing different directions. Would you feel a need to rearranged the room to everyone facing forward?  It would seem that the Web 2.0 environment may feel the same way.  

Gulbahar, et al. (2017) discusses barriers to adopting social media. It is mentioned that internal barriers by the instructors cause a "greater challenge".  I agree with this. While knowing how and when to use social media is important and key to initial and continued use. I wonder about addressing the internal barriers.

I recall a discussion during my internship with the Office of Distance Learning last semester about handling inappropriate posts in a Canvas discussion board. I searched Canvas to see what suggests were there on handling these types of posts.  I found this conversation on the idea board asking for this option with posts back to 2017. I appreciate that the discussion includes both a request for such a feature as well as a consideration of the workload of moderation.  Is post moderation something a teacher wants to take on?

What about a subreddit? Would that be a tool that allows for moderation that may be a good option for faculty who want more control.  I found information about the different types of moderation in Reddit. Perhaps an instructor can start with more control and adjust as they are more comfortable. This page also suggests that if a post doesn't break a rule, let it be downvoted instead of removing it.

This made me think about balancing the need for control versus setting appropriate guidance up front. Perhaps students could set the "rules" for the subreddit and moderate themselves with the up and down voting? 

What do you think, do you have control concerns about using Web2.0? Does this impact which tools you might pick and how you would use them?

Gülbahar, Y., Rapp, C., Kilis, S., & Sitnikova, A. (2017). Enriching higher education with social media: Development and evaluation of a social media toolkit. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 18(1). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v18i1.2656