[NoMoreNicksLeft]

How can one protect the integrity of a website if they're undermining free speech rights and simultaneously derailing conversations and fragmenting communities while doing so?

Though we didn't first define what "integrity" meant, it now seems impossible to formulate a meaning for it that isn't absurdly ironic given the actions performed to protect it.

One could be forgiven if we were talking about a forum or website that exists in a totalitarian regime like China... better that there be some conversation than the only other option, none at all. But in the US or Europe or any other nation that considers itself even minimally enlightened?

Moderation is not the solution. It may even be the problem.

[BHSPitMonkey]

> How can one protect the integrity of a website if they're undermining free speech rights

What free speech rights? You have no legal right to compel someone else to display your words on their website.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

That's an interesting theory. I'm not sure you understand the implications of it though. Were it so simple, then it is plausible enough to construct a society where you have no free speech at all, anywhere, without your legal rights being violated.

In fact, you all seem to be constructing that society even as we speak. Given the audience of this particular forum, more than a few of you are literally doing just that, rather than being accomplices and bystanders.

I'm more of a free speech fundamentalist myself.

[sgdesign]

It's not a theory, it's literally how free speech works in the real world. Private entities can't be compelled by the government to to publish content they don't want to publish, just like they also can't be silenced by that government.

What you seem to be asking for is a world where the government can override the autonomy of publications and force them to publish specific items. How is that "free" speech?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

No, that's not how it works in the real world. that's how it works in your low-fidelity perception of the real world. You've never much bothered to check if your model matches the observations you might make.

Look at the statement "private entities can't be compelled by the government". Which government are we even talking about here? It's quite clear that many governments do actually compel such things when it suits them. Have you never noticed?

You might switch to making the argument that "private governments shouldn't x", and I suppose if you were clever they might even be good arguments. You might also make the argument that this government or that government doesn't currently do it... but that boils down to "I want it to continue not compelling x". Hardly an argument, except maybe for the status quo.

You don't know what I'm asking for. It's an idea far enough outside your narrow cone of comprehension and even narrower cone of imagination that we might as well not even be speaking the same language.

[stonogo]

Leaping from "I get to decide what's on my website" to "you've created a society" is pretty silly. Your argument is missing any meaningful linkages. It would be stronger if you articulated them instead of handwaving about plausibility.

Personally I don't think social media speech is that important. It's ad-based, convenience-driven, and fickle. If it were to disappear people would just move to different media.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

If some magical event occurred where it did disappear, what do you imagine would be the media that people would move to?

I'm coming up blank. Could it even be non-electronic in this day and age? If it were, it'd almost certainly look identical to current social media. If it didn't look like that, what, we'd all get ham licenses and tap out our opinions in Morse? Maybe we'd set up landline partylines and gossip until the wee hours of the morning?

Would people start mailing in letters to the editor again to magazine printed on cheap acid-soaked paper? Wearing sandwich signs and walking down the sidewalks in major metropolitan areas?

[stonogo]

It's a "Jump to Conclusions Mat". You see, you have this mat, with different conclusions written on it that you could jump to!