[_heimdall]

I totally get your concerns with discourse online quickly going to unhelpful or seemingly dangerous areas, we've all seen it.

If the only solution is moderation though, aka censorship, I'd argue that the real problem is the medium itself and not how we're using it. It seems totally reasonable that having meaningful and useful dialog via a medium that allows anonymous participation may just not work.

Censorship is an extremely dangerous road. It often starts out well intentioned, as is the road to hell and all that. There were very important reasons the US founding fathers specifically carved out free speech as a fundamental right. Without it, censorship will inevitably used against the public. If censorship is the only way to have discussions online then we should just give up on that fantasy and have instead have meaningful conversations in public, say on your front porch with those that live in your community.

[mrgoldenbrown]

You are conflating censorship by the govt and moderation of a privately run forum.

[_heimdall]

Moderation is censorship though, it doesn't matter who is doing it. I raised the founding father's only to make the point that people have already learned the hard way that censorship carries very real risks, not to directly equate government censorship and censorship in private groups or on private platforms. The former is legally protected, the latter generally isn't.

My GP comment isn't arguing that censorship online is dangerous because of governments, its that censorship of speech in general is dangerous. People need to be able to freely speak their mind.

Online that can easily get out of control. You could argue that we just need benevolent censors to deal with it. I'm arguing that anonymous online discussions just don't created an environment where quality conversations will happen.

[kelnos]

> I raised the founding father's only to make the point that people have already learned the hard way that censorship carries very real risks

I don't think that really makes the point, though. The founding fathers recognized that government censorship is dangerous because the government has the power to take away your freedom and possessions, even your life. Putting censorship and police power together is a recipe for autocracy, oppression, and human rights violations.

Censorship by private individuals and organizations just doesn't have the same punch. Consider that the first amendment is only concerned with government censorship; the founding fathers could have banned all forms of censorship if they thought it was a reasonable and necessary thing to do.

> I'm arguing that anonymous online discussions just don't created an environment where quality conversations will happen.

That's trivially disprovable: we're having one right now, on an online forum that has moderation (or "censorship", if you must).

[bdcravens]

The appeal to authority via the "founding fathers" probably isn't the best argument one could make. The centuries have propped up a legendary version of them that is a bit different from the reality. In reality they weren't all Christians; Jefferson in particular. Jefferson also said the constitution should be rewritten every 19 years. History has lost the voices of those who dissented.

The point is that the values we have ascribed to them may not be accurate. I don't think they meant "free speech" to be a freedom orgy, but a tool to prevent abuse by those in power. Remember, moderation itself is a form of speech. The most democratic approach is public, transparent moderation. While it isn't perfect, I feel like HN does the best job of this I've seen.

[_heimdall]

> In reality they weren't all Christians; Jefferson in particular.

That's an interesting inclusion if you're wanting to avoid appeals to authority. Why does it matter whether they were Christian?

It is a fine line between appealing to authority and pulling historical examples of lessons learned the hard way. I don't know what else to refer to those who wrote the constitution as, if "founding fathers" has some subtle whiff of appealing to authority I'm haply to refer to them as something else. The point remains, though, that freedom of speech was protected so early on based on what people of that time saw happen without free speech.

[bdcravens]

My point was that the the first amendment says very little, so intuiting what they would think about situations other than Congress restricting free speech takes quite a big leap of inference, which often comes from a place of false information about what they truly believed. I was getting to the idea that much of what we believe about them is wrong or incomplete, so why would their values here hold any more to our preconceptions?

[_heimdall]

There's actually a still a surprisingly long collection of the founders' writings. Jefferson alone has a 1,000 page book full of his writings from notes and letters related to the Virginia state house to a letter he wrote to the king enumerating a list of grievances.

Knowing their values is extremely important. As you note, many of the amendments are short and when legally challenged the court is generally left interpreting what was meant and intended by the amendment. How could we interpret what was meant or intended by the law without knowing everything we can about those who wrote and passed the legislation?

[threecheese]

While I don’t disagree at all high level that power can (and does) corrupt the censors (-ers?), moderation can certainly feel like censorship when you want to say something in or act a certain way within a social group where others don’t want and shouldn’t have to hear or know about it. If your speech can be “moderated” within some social group (ex: they don’t interact with you), then why shouldn’t that group be permitted to revoke your permission to speak in their digital version of that group? Maybe this just doesn’t scale, or we haven’t figured out how to scale it yet.

Moderation ain’t censorship if you’re being a dick.

[PaulRobinson]

Freedom from censorship does not allow you to shout “Fire!”, in a crowded theatre, and all that.

A forum dedicated to a neighbourhood trying to be neighbourly does not need the fake panic of racism and xenophobia strewn through it. It’s fine to prohibit that behaviour.

[FergusArgyll]

------------- Begin Nitpick ---------------

The 'Fire' example is overused. The speech alone can directly cause physical harm. Racist, xenophobic and other distasteful speech does not. Free speech, in the USA means you have a right to distasteful speech, actively harming someone with speech is just as bad as harming them with a stick, therefore it can be prohibited.

----------- End Nitpick --------------

[squigz]

The fire example does not directly cause physical harm - unless they're Dragonborn, I suppose. What does, as with racism and other hate speech, is how people react to it. Do they panic and rush out the door? Do they act on the racist rhetoric?

[_heimdall]

One of the more damaging aspects of the cancel culture, woke culture, etc (pick your overused generalization term) is that they normalized the idea of retroactively blaming someone for how others respond to them.

I can't control how people respond to what I say. I can attempt to predict and account for what I think responses will be, but I can be wildly wrong.

The whole way through it has felt to me like a lazy shortcut around the fact that proving intent is extremely hard. Ignoring intent completely is much easier, and that's exactly what a person is doing when they judge someone based on how others respond as a replacement for understanding what that person originally meant.

[afarviral]

I've encountered this idea before from people with anti-woke tendencies; that they think woke people are holding them responsible for causing offense as though causing offense is the harm that the woke crowd believes needs to be stopped. Anyway, I just thought that view on things was funny. If anyone claiming to be woke does think this than they are more of a prude/puritanist/pedant than woke. I understand the thought that anti-woke people have but it's just a misunderstanding. The concern around hateful speech is around actual harm such as systematic ostracization of a group.

[fragmede]

There are already censors, just try and post a copy of the latest Disney movie or CSAM. The sooner we acknowledge that there are censors, the sooner we can figure out how to have constructive discussion online.

[_heimdall]

Of course there are already censors, and I'd say that's a problem. Sharing CSAM or a copyright protected media file isn't speech though, and isn't protected by free speech laws.

[kelnos]

Creating CSAM and posting it online is certainly speech, though, just as much as posting a legal form of original artwork is. But I'm 100% fine with the person responsible for that CSAM being censored and prosecuted, by the government, and that's exactly what will happen.

[_heimdall]

If you extend speech protections to cover creating and distributing CSAM you open the flood gates to a mountain of other actions that are crimes today.

What is the difference in creating CSAM and creating heroine that would make the former free speech and the later a crime?

[kelnos]

You say "censorship" instead of "moderation" because the former has negative connotations, but I don't agree that all forms of censorship are bad. Removing spam is censorship, but I would hope we can agree that we'd both prefer spam gets removed. (If you don't agree, then honestly let's just stop discussing this now, because our fundamentals are different enough that we're not going to agree on anything on this topic.)

> the real problem is the medium itself and not how we're using it. It seems totally reasonable that having meaningful and useful dialog via a medium that allows anonymous participation may just not work.

There are plenty of people on HN who are anonymous/pseudonymous, and yet we have lots of meaningful and useful dialog here. Not 100%, but still lots. This subthread is a fine example. I only see your username, and you haven't filled out anything in your profile, so you are for all intents and purposes anonymous to me. And yet... here we are.

And on the other side of that coin, read some of the other comment threads under this post and you'll see that there are anecdotes describing plenty of very-not-anonymous people who post shitty things on Facebook in places where people who know them in real life will see it. People who even lived near each other and could easily run into each other in town. I haven't been on Facebook for a good 5 years or so now, but in the 15 years or so I was an active user, I too saw plenty of truly nasty arguments, involving people with their real names and photos right there. And there is moderation there. I cringe to think how much worse it would be without.

People suck. We hold our beliefs too closely, and feel threatened when anyone challenges them. Sometimes we get scared of things and lash out in unfortunate ways. And that's before we even get to the tons of people who are racist, sexist, and whatever other -ist you can think of, and feel no hesitation or shame in displaying their disrespectful, hurtful, inhuman(e) attitudes in public.

> Censorship is an extremely dangerous road.

In general I am very skeptical of slippery-slope arguments. They're often used to shut down discussion without presenting any actual evidence of a trend, but only hand-wavy, hypothetical fears that something bad might happen.

But sure, censorship can get out of hand; that's why rules and guidelines are important. The HN guidelines, as an example, read as somewhat informal, but I think they're pretty great. I think they're why HN is fairly successful at fostering community and thoughtful discussion. Sure, sometimes the bad kind of censorship does happen; no set of guidelines is perfect, and no humans enforcing those guidelines are perfect. But that's life. You try to have a mechanism to call out and review bad decisions, and learn from the mistakes.

> There were very important reasons the US founding fathers specifically carved out free speech as a fundamental right

And yet the US government can and does censor people from time to time, with the support of SCOTUS rulings. 1A's grant of freedom of speech would appear to be absolute just from reading the text, but in practice it very much is not.

> If censorship is the only way to have discussions online then we should just give up on that fantasy and have instead have meaningful conversations in public

Sure, you can go and do that if you want. But I'm fine "talking" in public online spaces knowing that some moderation actions might censor what I have to say, for reasons that I might agree or disagree with. I don't think I should have the right to say whatever I want, wherever I want, to whomever I want, without consequences. That's not how any society works.

And think about that: moderation ("censorship") happens out in the real world too. I've experienced social circles where someone has been ostracized for behaving badly, to the point of being excluded from the group. That's the most extreme form of moderation/censorship: being banned!