| >If you're Twitter the answer is to not censor anything and to allow people to disseminate the information and to decide for themselves weather it looks relevant, fake, or whether its trustworthy. And if you do that, Twitter then becomes a 280 character 4chan/8kun-like platform. Moderation is essential to keeping internet forums from devolving into cesspools. The question then becomes, "who should do such moderation?" Should it be private entities (of which there are more than one within any political boundary), the government (which one can't opt out of short of physically moving) and/or both? I believe that government should stay out of the business of moderating speech, leaving that to private entities who (within certain limits, many of which don't apply WRT digital communications) can moderate/remove any content they choose. If I don't like how such entities do so, I can vote with my feet/wallet and go somewhere else. Which isn't generally feasible when a government does it. All that said, there definitely is a problem with disseminating dis/mis-information that has, and will (increasingly) continue to negatively impact discourse and political discussion. So what's to be done about it? That's a complicated question. For me, the answer is to try and get accurate news (not opinion -- opinion isn't news) from multiple sources and make a determination for myself as to the value/validity of information. Unfortunately, many folks are unwilling or unable (whether that be time constraints, lack of access, lack of knowledge/interest in sources that challenge their preconceived notions, etc.) to do so. And so many folks just assume that their Facebook/Google/Instagram/Tik-Tok feeds are accurate and honest. If/when that turns out not to be the case, large swathes of the population are now being misled and won't even know it. That DHS is looking at dis/mis-information as a national security threat isn't the problem -- in fact, I applaud them for doing so. The problem is one of institutional distrust (whether valid or not in this or any other circumstance, it exists), providing bad actors the space to spew false/misleading/irrelevant information to advance their goals. Which makes it more difficult for those with unpopular (not false or misleading -- there's a difference) ideas to gain traction. And that's a problem as well. How does this play out? I don't see anything close to a positive outcome (i.e., generally free speech and discourse with a strong tilt toward rewarding factual information and penalizing mis/dis-information). The best-case scenario in my mind would be more decentralization of discussion forums. That gives us both the best and worst of both worlds: Folks can express themselves freely in forums that are accepting of those types of expression, while limiting the impact of mis/dis-information to those who actively seek it out. Which isn't all that great for a "best-case" scenario, but seems more appropriate than heavy handed, centralized (private and governmental) moderation. I won't hold my breath. |
4chan is a forum. Everyone who browses a 4chan board sees the same posts. For that reason, these boards are moderated, but apparently not heavily enough for the tastes of some people, to whom for 4chan is the epitome of horror.
Twitter is a platform. Everyone who uses twitter decides who to follow and who to block. Everyone sees different tweets.
Twitter for a long time had almost complete freedom of speech. It described itself as the free speech wing of the free speech party[1]. In that time, it had fewer rules then 4chan. But to use twitter did not feel like using 4chan, unless you decided to follow the kind of people who post on 4chan.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/mar/22/twitter-tony-w...