[djsumdog]

> Big Tech will at least pay lip service to the idea of moderation

You are not really watching if you think that is what is happening. They are controlling the narrative. They are promoting some topics and pushing down other. Facebook deleted WalkAway, a group that had full moderation, did not allow any posts which called for violence, and which was pure political speech. Reddit is deleting each and every sub that goes against what their management believes; over 2000 have been banned last year only.

They are not paying lip service. They are directing narrative. They are banning things they don't like. They are deciding which scientific exports are orthodox and which are banned. They are controlling language. They are controlling thought. If you don't think that's happening, then they are controlling your thoughts as well.

This is the most dangerous time for us to be in and this will not end well. Censorship is the tool of cowards. Censorship is the tool of authoritarians. We are literally watching Big Tech and Big Media openly rewrite history. We are in 1984 + Fahrenheit 451 and half of us have bought so far into this narrative of protectionism we do not see it at all.

[themacguffinman]

But...that's what moderation is. Promoting some topics and pushing down others. Deleting certain groups which repeatedly break policies (which, by the way, are not limited to posts that call for violence). Deciding what is "orthodox" and what is not. This is common, even on this site. When a HN mod deletes a flagged thread because it doesn't follow the rules, are we all plunged into 1984 + Fahrenheit 451? When a comment is deleted and someone is baned even though they didn't literally call for violence, have they seized control of our thoughts?

The way I see it, Amazon (or Facebook etc) didn't censor Parler in the unilateral and totalitarian way you allude to. At some level, every company has to have the freedom to choose who they do business with, every person has to have the freedom to choose who they associate with. Amazon just said "no, I won't sell you AWS anymore". They didn't threaten Parler, Amazon does not have the power or authority to threaten Parler; They didn't and can't prevent Parler from choosing another provider. What's happening here is that Parler knows that no one else will voluntarily do business with them either.

Almost everyone in the industry has turned their back to Parler on their own. That cannot be censorship in the same way the lonely kid who no one wants to play with cannot be described as being censored in any meaningful sense of the word. Honestly I find it a worrying trend to be sure, but to portray individual free actions as censorship is to make the concept of censorship meaningless; It conflates the real dangers of authoritarian censorship with ordinary choices & biases that we take for granted every day.

[metiscus]

I believe that companies are largely on their own team, neither right nor left. How long before labor begins to be de-platformed for unionization efforts in the big tech companies? I know that there are already allegations that Amazon is acting in an extremely anti-labor way. Will the current argument of "platforms have a right to choose what content they will allow on their service" (which is a common argument for what is going on, among others) also apply in the case that pro-unionization groups are removed? These organisms will do whatever is necessary to protect themselves from what they perceive as threats, both external (political) and internal (labor).

[djsumdog]

> I believe that companies are largely on their own team, neither right nor left

Wat? Dude, Twitter, Reddit and Facebook's moderation policies are clearly left to far-left. They've done no blanket banning for calls to violence from the left. None of these people have had their pages, accounts or posts censored:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eQzLcO5qhY

and they clearly called for the types of violence we saw in 2017 and every year since up to and including now:

https://youtu.be/BXR3d22BhHs

edit: but yes, your point about labour is spot on. I can see that happening next for sure.

[metiscus]

Right now the winds are prevailing from that direction, yes. Were the opposition to have a single party government I suspect things would be different. Currently anti-trust legislation looms over them and they are gravitating towards the graces of those in power as well as removing accounts that legitimately do advocate violence (albeit not as evenhandedly as they should).

[cy_hauser]

> and which was pure political speech.

I'm okay with this. We've had Republican/Conservative vs. Democrat/Liberal in every other form of media that I can remember. What's wrong with that split with "Social Media" or with hosting providers (think publishers), etc.

The problems seems to be that conservatives thought these services should be neutral but the services themselves have not thought otherwise. It will sort itself out over the next five to ten years.