| >And, as usual, "risk/threat to democracy" is used to mean "support for parties I don't like" It can also mean highly influential support for ideologies I don't like - like fascism, authoritarianism and ultranationalism. > many of those complaining now were quite happy to endorse the right of private companies to promote/suppress speech at will A few years ago, bog-standard content moderation was limiting the reach of enormously+reasonably unpopular ideologies like fascism, authoritarianism and ultranationalism. Groups who were profoundly unhappy with these limits would bullhorn complaints of intentional suppression and censorship. With the release of the Twitter Files (which exposed content moderation), it became clear that many folks were unable to differentiate between actual, long-established content moderation methods and actual directed suppression and censorship.¹ This deep misinterpretation seemed to flow from the ignorance of what content moderation looks like at scale. That core misunderstanding was often amplified and made worse when historically-moderated individuals filled in that vacuum with their long standing preconceptions. The upshot are today's efforts to raise the visibility of far-right viewpoints thru coordinated crafted messaging² and thru actual suppression of non-right viewpoints thru new controls over platforms and thru often unaccountable misuse of governmental powers. Our present conditions seem to well reflect and align with the article author's analysis. ¹ https://www.techdirt.com/tag/twitter-files/ ² https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwA4k0E51Oo |