A brief argument that “moderation” is distinct from censorship mainly when it’s optional.
I read this as a corollary to Scott’s Archipelago and Atomic Communitarianism. It certainly raises similar issues—especially the existence of exit rights. Currently, even heavily free-speech platforms maintain the option of deleting content. This can be legal or practical. But doing so is incompatible with an “exit” right to opt back in to the deleted material.
Scott also suggests that if moderation becomes “too cheap to meter,” it’s likely to prevent the conflation with censorship. I’m not sure I see it. Assuming he means something like free, accurate AI tagging/filtering, how does that remove the incentive to call [objectionable thing X] worthy of proper censorship? I suppose it reduces the excuse of “X might offend people,” requiring more legible harms.
As a side note, I’m curious if anyone else browses the moderation log periodically. Perhaps I’m engaging with outrage fuel. But it also seems like an example of unchecking (some of) the moderation filters to keep calibrated.
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Notes -
The closest thing that actually exists for this sort of moderation is reddit. Each community has its own mods and its own rules.
Though of course there is no golden goose that someone won't choose to slaughter. So reddit has slowly been enforcing site wide moderation that defeats the whole point of their model.
The only reason reddit was so good for so many years was the complete incompetence of the people running it. The Reddit leadership was so bad, that they failed at every pro-monetization move they tried and the website continued having that 2010-eque charm.
The people who run Reddit do not understand Reddit.
We have already seen Tumblr be run into the ground by idiots. From the looks of it, Reddit is fast headed downhill too.
Can you imagine seeing Twitter's shakeup coming from 6 months away, and still having nothing ready to welcome what would've been a massive influx of people looking for a new social media home ?
If you are going to ruin a product, at least do it while laughing your way to the bank. Reddit somehow manages to stay broke and worsen the product.
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