A brief argument that “moderation” is distinct from censorship mainly when it’s optional.
I read this as a corollary to Scott’s Archipelago and Atomic Communitarianism. It certainly raises similar issues—especially the existence of exit rights. Currently, even heavily free-speech platforms maintain the option of deleting content. This can be legal or practical. But doing so is incompatible with an “exit” right to opt back in to the deleted material.
Scott also suggests that if moderation becomes “too cheap to meter,” it’s likely to prevent the conflation with censorship. I’m not sure I see it. Assuming he means something like free, accurate AI tagging/filtering, how does that remove the incentive to call [objectionable thing X] worthy of proper censorship? I suppose it reduces the excuse of “X might offend people,” requiring more legible harms.
As a side note, I’m curious if anyone else browses the moderation log periodically. Perhaps I’m engaging with outrage fuel. But it also seems like an example of unchecking (some of) the moderation filters to keep calibrated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'm not sure I phrased that right. I'm saying that the proposed unfiltered product isn't viable if it doesn't distinguish between actual pure trash and political incorrectness. So defiltering makes the product unusable instantly, no one would really use it. The filtered product would still be usable, and dominant. There would be a certain value in the existence of a short-form 4chan aspect to Twitter, but that reminds me of another thing I was trying to get my head around:
To what extent are social media platforms interested in excluding groups that habitually organize to break their internal systems from taking part in their social media ecosystem at all to avoid giving them space to organize? If unfiltered Twitter existed, and rdrama-type trolls were allowed to hang out there provided they all had their filters off, one of the things they're going to do is organize sallies out into the filtered world, and they'll always figure out how to grief users in the overworld. Inviting those people to use a dark corner of your platform is inviting the bikers into the bar, even if they just get a table over there they're eventually going to cause trouble.
Selection bias. I can't even know of times when I hypothetically would have thought of it slower, if I read an article on RiverAveBlues two days before I would have thought "The Yankees should trade for Trevor Story" then I'm never going to think of trading for Trevor Story on my own. It's more like @daseindustriesltd 's idea of modernity as a distributed conspiracy, if we're all educated in the same universities and reading the same blogs and listening to the same podcasts, the same ideas will occur to everyone.
Ah, you read it as minimum viable, I read it as minimum viable. I have talked with many people who would consider Scott's proposal not censorship, so I could see it being instituted. And I think social media companies would comply with that and stop there. Then everyone would talk about how they love free speech on the filtered version and just treat you like a criminal when they hear you use the unfiltered version. You would be told the information is free, and it's up to you to go find it, which is true.
It sounds like you are describing an egregore? Or maybe the zeitgeist as an egregore? That's one way you can view history, as a bunch of different egregores fighting it out on the conceptual plane. First there were family egregores, then tribe then village and so on (although all those smaller ones remained). You are noticing your integration into those egregores I think, and as a trend setter that's how it looks. As a regular member it just looks like everyone is saying on fleek all of a sudden for no particular reason.
Thanks for turning me on to tht term egregore. That's an interesting rabbit hole.
They are quite fascinating yeah. Make sure you search the vault here too, I think some of our smarties have talked about it (although it is a rather old concept and while it has always had mystical elements it has always been sociological or anthropological - the mystical stuff was because we didn't understand memes and so didn't have a scientific framework to use I think.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link