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 -
Copying a comment I made on the SSC subreddit.
I don't like this distinction, and this isn't the argument I think should be made in the first place. Moderation is censorship. I cannot speak to the public on a platform in any manner I want because some third party (the mods) have decided I cannot violate their arbitrary rules.
The key point is the distribution of power. In a setting with very few global rules and many variations of local rules, individuals reign mostly supreme. Don't like how a locality runs their things and they won't change? Leave and make your own. This is like Reddit, where admins handle site-wide (but ideally limited) rules and violations of said rules, and volunteer moderators who have a stake in the group's success manage their own areas.
In contrast, a place where the global:local rule ratio is more equal (or just weighted more to the global side) is one that is engaging in censorship. This is equivalent to Facebook or Twitter, where one centralized ruleset governs everybody (leaving no one happy except those who agree with the status quo).
In my opinion, the argument should be "make Reddit-like segregation the norm".
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