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by slg 1788 days ago
Fair, but this is a question of implementation. Objective truth being hard to define doesn't mean there is no such thing as objective truth.
1 comments

The view of "if we just implement it right" it will be fine is a fallacy.

These organizations represent immense power through influence. By their very existence arises the conflict power and truth. If you can have influence over the fact checkers, then you have influence over truth. Who would you trust to form such an organization? Where is the oversight? Who monitors the monitors?

We are seeing what "reasonable censorship" actually looks like. It is an oxymoron.

>The view of "if we just implement it right" it will be fine is a fallacy.

Good thing I didn't say that then. The original comment that I was challenging said there was no such thing as fact checking. "Fact checking is hard" is not an argument in support of the idea that fact checking doesn't exist as a concept.

>We are seeing what "reasonable censorship" actually looks like. It is an oxymoron.

What is your definition of censorship? Because there is plenty of speech that I think is reasonable to censor. Obviously there is the illegal speech. Should Facebook be forced to host threats, defamation, copyright infringement, child porn, etc? What about the speech that is not illegal but is objectionable in some way? Should Facebook be forced to include hardcore porn in people's feeds if someone posts it? Once we establish that not all speech is appropriate in all contexts, censorship sure starts to seem reasonable. We just don't call it censorship because of the negative connotation. We call "reasonable censorship" moderation.

Yes, what is bound by law is not an option. However, in most cases the law should handle it. Meaning that the post remains unless some legal action is taken as the host often can't just know the legal status except in the more obvious case of child porn etc.

It is censorship when it is out of the control of users. It is filtering when the user has a choice.

Yes, users want to see or not see some categories of content. That certainly is not a problem when it is presented to the user as a choice.

There are platforms that operate mostly in this method, like MeWe.