| 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! |