[kragen]

Suppose you have two video-sharing platforms which use basically the same recommendation algorithms (etc.) to keep people engaged and clicking on videos, and they're equally effective — except that one of them censors recommendations based on some political criteria, for example, being "extremist", such as whoever the modern equivalent of Martin Luther King is. Let's call the censored platform "JedgarTube" and the other one "MLKTube", for lack of better terms. There are a couple of possibilities:

1. Those recommendations were actually less effective at keeping people engaged than whatever recommendations replace them on JedgarTube. In that case, MLKTube needs to copy the decision in order not to lose users gradually to JedgarTube. In fact, whichever platform blocks those recommendations first will experience improved user growth and engagement. Essentially the recommendations were just a bug of a primitive recommendation algorithm.

2. Those recommendations were actually more effective at keeping people engaged than whatever recommendations replace them on JedgarTube. In that case, JedgarTube will gradually lose users to MLKTube, again, assuming the platforms are otherwise equal.

Of course, the truth is that any particular censorship decision could fall into either #1 or #2. The #1 censorship decisions will be copied by MLKTube, if they aren't too incompetent or principled, while the #2 decisions will gradually accumulate into a competitive disadvantage for eyeballs at JedgarTube.

That's why the media platforms and government censors are trying to set up a global censorship system — whichever platform steps up first to be JedgarTube will lose viewers to whoever's censorship implementation is a step or two behind.

Note that none of this logic depends on normative judgments such as "extremist content is bad", "extremist content is good", "people should have freedom of speech", "people shouldn't have freedom of speech", "platforms shouldn't manipulate people with algorithmic recommendations", "algorithmic recommendations are good for people", or anything like that. It's purely reasoning about objective causes and effects about people's behavior, although I've chosen my terms to weaken the evident bias against "extremism" in this discussion so readers can reason about these causes and effects instead of being thrown around by their emotional biases.

[stcredzero]

That's why the media platforms and government censors are trying to set up a global censorship system — whichever platform steps up first to be JedgarTube will lose viewers to whoever's censorship implementation is a step or two behind.

The market isn't going to do what we want, so we're going to implement it using centralized power instead.

I didn't elect these big companies to censor the public discourse, and it's highly disturbing that they're working hand in hand with the government to do this.

Note that none of this logic depends on normative judgments

The "logic" depends on the normative judgement that what would result from a free market would be bad. There have been too few big players doing too much meddling and manipulation of the markets contained within their walled gardens to know whether that would be the case or not.

[kragen]

I didn't elect these big companies to censor the public discourse

Well, there are things you can do about it, but I didn't want to get into that when describing the incentives that make it difficult or impossible for them to censor the public discourse unilaterally, but possible to do as a cartel. I think it's important for people to have a solid factual understanding of what's going on in order for their normative judgments, and the plans they make based on those judgments, to be well-founded.

The "logic" depends on the normative judgement that what would result from a free market would be bad

No, none of the cause-and-effect relationships I described depend on anything being bad. They function in exactly the same way regardless of whether that would be good or bad.

[stcredzero]

Well, there are things you can do about it, but I didn't want to get into that when describing the incentives that make it difficult or impossible for them to censor the public discourse unilaterally, but possible to do as a cartel.

If you are acknowledging that a cartel in collusion with the government is acting to censor everyone's speech, that's at least a start.

No, none of the cause-and-effect relationships I described depend on anything being bad. They function in exactly the same way regardless of whether that would be good or bad.

The sneaky conceit is that you've constructed a causal scenario that presupposes the undesirability of a supposedly inevitably caused future. If we had more commerce, more free speech, more sharing of culture, and more cultural change, we would have less extremism. History shows us this quite clearly. It's when big, centralized powers start mucking about with the lives of individuals, that extremism rears its ugly head and becomes a problem.

[kragen]

What leads you to believe that I presuppose the undesirability of people supposedly inevitably having access to Martin Luther King? Perhaps you aren't from the US, so you don't understand the cultural context of my example of extremism? Or did you mean that I am claiming that the formation of a censorship cartel is supposedly inevitable? I wasn't claiming that; I was claiming that in the absence of a censorship cartel, people will tend to move to platforms whose recommendations aren't censored, and so they will have access to Martin Luther King and other extremist content.

[stcredzero]

I presuppose the undesirability of people supposedly inevitably having access to Martin Luther King?

I'm tiring of your willful redirection of referents, which I think is the point of your construction. Your "logic" (that basically amounts to censorship is necessary because it's inevitable that bad people will win) smacks of the same mental gymnastics people used to "prove" the existence of god.

people will tend to move to platforms whose recommendations aren't censored

Yes, and this will eventually result in MLK (whose positions are now centrist) winning and authoritarians on both extremes losing. Your scheme uses a lot of words to attempt a pretty transparent sleight of hand.

[kragen]

Again, I am not arguing that censorship is "necessary", nor am I saying anything about bad people. I am saying that individual websites are not in a position to impose censorship unilaterally in a very effective way, and those who attempt it will lose users to those that do not, but that a cartel of a sufficiently large group of popular websites is in a position to impose censorship. This is true entirely independent of whether censorship is good, bad, or mixed. Furthermore, it doesn't imply that censorship is either inevitable or impossible, since the formation and continuation of such a cartel is an uncertain contingency upon which effective censorship is conditioned.

As to whether MLK's positions now being "centrist", I suspect you're one of those people who haven't read anything he wrote other than "I Have a Dream", and haven't even read more than excerpts from that, but all of that is irrelevant to the argument, because in my original post, I was talking about today's equivalent to MLK, who is by definition not centrist.

Your accusations of dishonesty — "You[]…attempt a pretty transparent sleight of hand" — are false and unfounded, and you need to withdraw them immediately.