[hackerlight]

> I dispute that Twitter could be a tool against those things, because that implies that it's within Twitter's capabilities to know everything that is going on in the world in order to distinguish between true and untrue tweets.

You're saying that omniscience is a necessary condition before Twitter can start doing good in the world, instead of bad? This is a non-sequitur.

> Given that limitation, I would argue that the ideal communication medium simply conveys the messages it's given without regard for their contents. What people do with those messages is something that the medium has no power over.

I would argue that this is ignorant of social psychology. Sunlight isn't the best disinfectant, and people aren't rational non-tribal agents who will all hold hands and sing Kumbaya only if they could have totally unmoderated discourse. Twitter will become an 8chan sewer if your ideology is adopted by them.

[fluoridation]

>You're saying that omniscience is a necessary condition before Twitter can start doing good in the world, instead of bad?

No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying perfect knowledge and perfect filtering are necessary for Twitter to avoid being used to oppress and propagandize.

>Twitter will become an 8chan sewer if your ideology is adopted by them.

The way you're saying it assumes that this is obviously a bad thing, while in fact it's a matter of opinion. I personally think the optimal level of moderation in any discussion forum is that which only prevents disruption of the forum's functioning.

[hackerlight]

> perfect knowledge and perfect filtering are necessary for Twitter to avoid being used to oppress and propagandize.

That only makes sense if you think that an unmoderated Twitter can't also be used to oppress and propagandize, which is naive.

Revenge porn and harassment has oppressive outcomes. A foreign intelligence agency flooding the zone with misinformation, has the effect of propagandizing.

> the optimal level of moderation in any discussion forum is that which only prevents disruption of the forum's functioning.

There is a theme here of you liking hard categories and arbitrary cutoffs. It suggests to me a rigidity of thought.

> The way you're saying it assumes that this is obviously a bad thing, while in fact it's a matter of opinion.

Of course it's my opinion, what other opinion would I be sharing? I don't want to live in a world where ISIS propaganda is radicalizing millions of people because of free speech purism being applied to a social media company.

[fluoridation]

>That only makes sense if you think that an unmoderated Twitter can't also be used to oppress and propagandize

So let me get this straight. The only way that the statement "perfect knowledge and perfect filtering are necessary for Twitter to avoid being used to oppress and propagandize" can be true is if "zero filtering would prevent Twitter being used to oppress and propagandize". If you could, please explain how that makes sense.

>There is a theme here of you liking hard categories and arbitrary cutoffs. It suggests to me a rigidity of thought.

OK.

>I don't want to live in a world where ISIS propaganda is radicalizing millions of people because of free speech purism being applied to a social media company.

I think if Western culture offers such a weak argument that it can't compete with such a backwards ideology in a free marketplace of ideas, that it deserves to be trampled by it and forgotten. The worst thing that could be done for ISIS is to give them a megaphone that's as loud as everyone else's.

[hackerlight]

Well you told me my initial interpretation of what you said was wrong, so I tried to find an alternative meaning behind what you were saying. But now I see my initial interpretation was accurate. You are indeed saying that, if Twitter isn't omniscient, then it won't be able to avoid being used to oppress and propagandize because it's not possible moderate perfectly. This is the just the perfect solution fallacy.

  "free marketplace of ideas"

This is a culture war talking point that is ignorant of the reality of social psychology and the social contagion of bad memes. Suicide contagion, stochastic terrorism from ISIS supporters in Europe and white nationalists in the US who were mostly radicalized online, the rise of populism in the US since 2015, wokeness ideology spreading to all institutions in a few years. You think you can just shine a light on bad ideas and they'll go away, but the exact opposite is true if they play to people's tribal instincts and resentments. Heck the rise of fascism last century was partly memetic propagation due to the mass production of culture. If you want to form a worldview based on social psychology, then it should actually be based on social psychology.

[fluoridation]

>You are indeed saying that, if Twitter isn't omniscient, then it won't be able to avoid being used to oppress and propagandize because it's not possible moderate perfectly. This is the just the perfect solution fallacy.

No. The Nirvana fallacy would be "since moderating imperfectly doesn't completely eliminate the problem of Twitter being used to oppress or propagandize, no moderation should be applied". Actually I'm saying that a) moderating imperfectly doesn't completely eliminate the problem, and b) no moderation should be applied because inconsistent moderation is worse than no moderation (without this being related to the previous point, but just in general).

>You think you can just shine a light on bad ideas and they'll go away

Actually I'm disputing the idea of "good and bad ideas" in this context. Neither Islamism nor any of the examples you gave are good or bad in an objective sense. The most we can say is that they're more or less successful in perpetuating themselves in time, or that they cause more or less of some specific phenomenon. I described Islamism as backwards and stupid but that's my opinion, not an objective measure. If when given sufficient exposure it would win ideologically then I think it should be allowed to win. I see no reason to prevent this.

>If you want to form a worldview based on social psychology

When did I say that?

[hackerlight]

  "no moderation should be applied because inconsistent moderation is worse than no moderation"

This is still your cognitive style of wanting hard and rigid categories for no good reason.

The consistency of moderation is a spectrum, from very poor to average to excellent.

You're insisting on drawing a rigid binary of "inconsistent" versus "perfectly consistent", and saying that since "perfectly consistent" is impossible, the only alternative is "inconsistent" which is categorically worse than than no moderation by sheer virtue of the binary category that it's assigned to. This is the perfect solution fallacy.

  "Actually I'm disputing the idea of "good and bad ideas" in this context"

Right, so if literal authoritarian Islamists became the dominant paradigm and Sharia was imposed on you by force you have no problem with it simply because that's what won in the marketplace of ideas. No, this is nihilistic moral relativism, and I know you conservative types don't really believe in moral relativism, it's probably just disingenuous posturing because you know right-leaning opinions tend to be banned more often in social media in the current moment, so it's helpful to adopt a stance on censorship that seems more principled and logically consistent. The left did this in the 1960s. If it was just ISIS propaganda being banned and nothing else I know I wouldn't be hearing any of these nihilistic relativistic arguments.