[_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.