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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
First, on a personal note, this is exactly what I stoner-hot-take predicted Musk would do with Twitter in a prior motte thread. This freaks me out. Not that it's all that creative a take, but it's something I've noticed before when I was spending too much time in narrow epistemic corners (team fan blogs, fashion blogs) where I'd start to think the same thoughts that showed up on the blogs a week later. The same trade ideas for fan blogs, or I'd pick something up at a thrift store that caught my eye and a week later it would get anointed a trend. It's sort of a weird hivemind thing, we're all thinking about the same issues based on the same influences at the same time if we're all consuming the same set of blogs and news sites. So you can look there for my joking-not-joking predictions as to how this will go, it's a good plan but it won't survive contact with the enemy (users).
Second, to address a specific point SA makes:
Twitter would be completely unusable without any bans or filters, filled with bots and scams and obvious harassment. That's not a viable product. The minimum viable product has to filter out enough to make the product usable. I don't want to see "banned" posts, I want to see posts banned for political incorrectness. Maybe. Shout out to the mods of themotte, would themotte be usable in your judgment without that kind of basic filtering?
"Accurate" is a point of contention here. It's not unusual to have certain topics be overwhelmingly dominated by a particularly numerous or energetic viewpoint on the topic, even just something simple like Toronto sports can get weird with sportswriters admitting they softpedaled coverage of the Raptors and Blue Jays because the articles got a ton of clicks from Canadian fans, along with a ton of comments yelling at the writer if they insulted Toronto's honor. If you're any country other than the USA, you risk being flooded by American content and American viewpoints. While I'm not defending Chinese censorship per se, I do think that saying opening up to all sources of information increases accuracy can be disputed.
People (including myself) have been coming up with the idea of reframing freedom of speech as "freedom to listen" for most (but not all!) purposes since forever. It has a bunch of obvious benefits: it's much easier to defend one's right to read Mein Kampf than Hitler's right to have it read (should he have it even?), it's easy to go on the counteroffensive and ask who exactly and on what grounds reserves the right to read something and then decide that I don't have that right for me, and consequently forces the usually unspoken but implied idea that some people are too stupid to be allowed to read dangerous things into the open--I don't disagree actually, but who is deciding and how do I qualify for unrestricted access?
And freedom to listen flat out contradicts the naive interpretation of freedom of speech as freedom to call people nwords on the internet. Because obviously freedom to listen is a freedom to choose what to listen to, and someone interfering with it by screaming the nword violates it. When you think about how to implement it technically, naturally you get the idea of moderation as a service that readers subscribe to based on their individual preferences, rather than something that must be applied to writers in a one size fits all fashion.
The problem doesn't really change either way, a platform can still insist that you go listen elsewhere. Just as they argue you don't have the unlimited right to speak anywhere, they'd argue that you don't have the unlimited right to hear whatever you want wherever you want if it would require someone else to be in listening distance.
The argument against censorship should emphasize that people can and have been hilariously wrong in the past, and there's no proof we're any better at understanding what's true or not, so we should be willing to listen to ideas that go against what we say.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link