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.
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Notes -
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.)
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