Why Moderating Content Actually Does More To Support The Principles Of Free Speech
from the back-to-basics dept
Obviously over the past few years there’s been all of these debates about the content moderation practices of various websites. We’ve written about it a ton, including in our Content Moderation Case Study series (currently on hiatus, but hopefully back soon). The goal of that series was to demonstrate that content moderation is rarely (if ever) about “censoring” speech, and almost always about dealing with extremely challenging decisions that any website has to deal with if they host content from users. Some of that involves legal requirements, some of it involves trying to keep a community focused, some of it involves dealing with spam, and some of it involves just crazy difficult decisions about what kind of community you want.
And yet, there are still those who insist that any forms of content moderation are either censorship or somehow “against the principles of free speech.” That’s the line we keep hearing. Last week in the discussion regarding Elon Musk’s poll about whether or not Twitter “supported” free speech, people kept telling me that the key point was about the “principles of free speech,” rather than what the law says. This discussion also came up recently with regards to the various discussions on cancel culture.
I understand where this impulse comes from — because I had it in the past myself. Over a decade ago I was invited to give a talk to policy people running one of the large user-generated content platforms, and it was chock full of former ACLU/free speech lawyers. And I remember one of them asking me if I had thoughts on when it would be okay for them to remove content. I started to say that it should be avoided at almost all costs… when they began tossing out example after example that began to make me realize that “never” is not an answer that works here. I still recommend listening to a Radiolab episode from a few years ago that does an amazing job laying out the impossible choices when it comes to content moderation. It highlights how not only is “never” not a reasonable option, but how no matter what rules you set, you will be faced with an unfathomable number of cases where the “right” answer or the “right” way to apply a policy is not at all clear.
Lawyer Akiva Cohen recently had a really worthwhile thread that explains why the entire concept of a “philosophical commitment to free speech” is somewhat meaningless if you think it’s distinct from government consequence. The key point that he makes is that once you separate the “principles” or the “philosophy” of free speech from legal consequences, you’re simply down to debating competing speech and associations:
I think that’s exactly correct, and why I keep pointing out that so much of the talk about “cancel culture” is often really about people who want to be free from the social consequences of critics’ speech. And the issue with content moderation is that it’s people wishing to be free from the social consequences of others’ association choices. A key part of actual free speech includes the right to associate — or not to associate. And compelled speech goes against that.
But I want to take this argument even further, because it seems like many people believe that even if you recognize that concept, content moderation is somehow inherently incompatible with support for free speech. And I can understand the first order thinking that gets you there: content moderation involves taking down or otherwise restricting some speech, and so that automatically feels like it must go against “free speech.”
But the reality is a lot more nuanced, to the point that content moderation clearly actually enables more free speech. First, let’s look at the world without any content moderation. A website that has no content moderation but allows anyone to post will fill up with spam. Even this tiny website gets thousands of spam comments a day. Most of them are (thankfully) caught by the layers upon layers of filtering tools we’ve set up.
Would anyone argue that it is “against the principles of free speech” to filter spam? I would hope not.
But once you’ve admitted that it’s okay to filter spam, you’ve already admitted that content moderation is okay — you’re just haggling over how much and where to draw the lines.
And, really, the spam example is instructive in many ways. People recognize that if a website is overrun with spam, it’s actually detrimental for speech overall, because how can anyone communicate when all of the communication is interrupted or hard to find due to spam?
So moderating spam seems to quite clearly enable more free speech by making platforms for speech more usable. Without such moderation, the platforms would get less use and people would be less likely to be able to speak in the same manner.
Now let’s expand that circle out as well. There’s increasing evidence that when you have a totally freeform venue for free speech, it makes many people hold back and not join in. For all the talk of “cancel culture” that relies on claims that people are somehow “afraid” to speak their minds, they should maybe consider that the problem might not be cancel culture, but that some people don’t want to have to constantly debate their beliefs with every rando who challenges them.
In other words, a full open forum is not all that conducive to “free speech” either, because it’s too much.
Instead, what content moderation does is create spaces where more people can feel free to talk. It creates different communities which aren’t just an open free for all, but are more focused and targeted. This actually ties back into the Section 230 debate as well. As the authors of Section 230 have explained, when they wrote that “The Internet and other interactive computer services offer a forum for a true diversity of political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad avenues for intellectual activity” they did not mean that every website should host all of that content itself, but rather that by enabling content moderation, distinct and diverse communities could form. As they explained:
In our view as the law’s authors, this requires that government allow a thousand flowers to bloom—not that a single website has to represent every conceivable point of view. The reason that Section 230 does not require political neutrality, and was never intended to do so, is that it would enforce homogeneity: every website would have the same “neutral” point of view. This is the opposite of true diversity.
To use an obvious example, neither the Democratic National Committee nor the Republican National Committee websites would pass a political neutrality test. Government-compelled speech is not the way to ensure diverse viewpoints. Permitting websites to choose their own viewpoints is.
Section 230 is agnostic about what point of view, if any, a website chooses to adopt; but Section 230 is not the source of legal protection for platforms that wish to express a point of view. Online platforms, no less than offline publishers, have a First Amendment right to express their opinion. When a website expresses its own opinion, it is, with respect to that expression, a content creator and, under Section 230, not protected against liability for that content.
In other words, the concept of free speech should support a diversity of communities — not all speech on every community (or any particular community). And content moderation is what makes that possible.
The internet itself is an incredible platform for free speech, and we should be fighting to keep that wider internet open and free from too much regulatory burden and limits. But part of the reason the internet is such an incredible platform is that on the internet, anyone is able to find different communities that they feel are appropriate for them. Or to create their own without first having to get permission.
The people who demand that someone else’s community must conform to their standards aren’t supporting “principles of free speech,” they’re demanding others bend to their wills.
And if that’s the case, it’s going to end up shutting down a lot of speech. This is where the “association” part of free speech comes in. I don’t want to host a ton of spam on Techdirt so I filter it. If I were required to host all that spam and not moderate it, I would shut down our comments, because otherwise they’d be useless.
Similarly, if we force websites to host all content “in the name of free speech” those websites are much less likely to want to continue offering that service to the public. Because now they’re offering something different than what they wanted to offer, and now they have to deal with spam, abuse, harassment and other nonsense that is driving away many of their other users.
The end result then, is that you get fewer places for speech, rather than more. And that is an attack on the “principles of free speech.”
None of this means that there aren’t reasons to criticize particular moderation policies or decisions. But we can debate them based on the specifics: why this policy or that decision may be problematic for reasons x, y, and z. But to simply state that those policies are “against free speech” is meaningless.
Filed Under: cancel culture, content moderation, free speech, principles of free speech, section 230
Comments on “Why Moderating Content Actually Does More To Support The Principles Of Free Speech”
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As I’ve put it before:
Moderation is community curation. One community might be fine with loose/no moderation; another community might be fine with tight moderation. Every community, regardless of size, should—and does!—have the right to make that decision for themselves.
Re: censorship
i completely disagree with your statagy to control speech
the publics right to speak out weighs your so called right to read only what you want read you are jaded not every one is now the problem is obvious the media refuse to create a flexable format that could easily satify all readers thats because they love control not freedom so yes i despise people like you as all americans should
People want different content, gaming or tech forums host tech or gaming duscussions or comments,for example if you post weird extremist content or political content it will be removed or blocked.
The value of the open Internet is it allows people to make their own content or forums to communicate and form community’s that might be quiet niche or host for example lgbt or minority forums that might not exist before the web was invented
Moderation is essential to prevent forums being flooded with spam ads or trolls that harass other users
Some authoritarian country’s ban forums or certain apps that might be used to allow free speech by minoritys religious groups or critics of the government
We cannot take free speech for granted Fosta has taken away the right of sex workers to organise or communicate online and many platforms removed ordinary dating ads to avoid legal action
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Strawman
MM seems to think that people asking for free speech on platforms are asking for no moderation to exist. That’s a strawman argument. What people want, on systems that aim to be neutral platforms for literally hundreds of millions of people to speak their minds, is for those platforms not to silence people on issues for which there are plentiful supporters on all sides.
I bring up the Babylon Bee incident of “awarding” Rachel Levine as their Man of the Year as a perfectly illustrative example. Like it or not, there is a huge and robust debate between “transwomen are women” and “transwomen are men”, with strong feelings on both sides. In such a debate, satire, yelling, and vituperation will naturally enter into the picture, because that’s how strongly felt issues work. Twitter deciding that the Bee’s satire is hate speech and demanding that it be taken down is the sort of violation of principles of free speech that people are complaining about.
(To futilely try to head off replies: freedom of speech is not isomorphic to the 1st Amendment. A private company is not legally obligated to uphold principles of free speech, but platforms that serve hundreds of millions of people ought to uphold those principles anyway. Criticizing a company for not doing so is not isomorphic to demanding that the government force them to do that. Silencing one side of a debate by claiming that not doing so will drive people away is not upholding principles of freedom of speech. Yada yada.)
Re:
Translation: “We want to be able to fuck around without having suffer from finding out.”
Twitter has every right to decide what speech it will and will not host. People who can’t abide by the rules of Twitter will lose the privilege of using it—and yes, it is a privilege to use Twitter, no matter what some misinformed malcontent tells you to the contrary. Don’t like it? Go to a platform with looser rules and bitch about it there. Example: 4chan doesn’t give a shit what you call trans people so long as you don’t post furry porn.
Yes or no: Should a platform be barred from banning an Al-Qaeda account if that account only posts content that falls squarely within the boundaries of the First Amendment?
Twitter isn’t legally, morally, or ethically obligated to uphold those principles. Neither is any other online platform. Don’t like it? Start your own and see how long figuring that out takes you.
Re:
First, who says that they aim to be neutral platforms? If a site is moderating in a way that supports one position and does not support (or even impedes) another, then I’d say you’ve got your answer right there as to whether the site intends to be neutral or not. Since there is nothing obligating them to be neutral, and since they’re treated identically by the law whether they’re neutral or not, what’s the problem?
Second, what does it matter whether there are plentiful supporters on all sides? There are, sadly, plenty of neo-nazis. There are people who support the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There are plenty of people all around the world who support killing people for stupid reasons of religion, race, sexuality, etc. Popularity does not mean that their ideas have merit, or should even be tolerated. Often to refuse to put up with such things is both classy and indicative of good morals.
Indeed, it doesn’t matter at all whether everyone in the world but the operator of a site holds an opinion which the site operator finds unacceptable, or whether only one person in the world does; either way, there is nothing in the least bit wrong about the site banning that particular opinion.
Re: What a way to miss the pont...
Hayzeus Kristos, Hyman, but you purely don’t get it, do you.
Mike explained exactly why you’re wrong, so I won’t repeat it here, nor paraphrase it because I wouldn’t do it justice. Instead, I’ll simply say (and quote you), if you think that “platforms that serve hundreds of millions of people should uphold those principles anyway”, then you’ve just committed Cardinal Sin #1 – you want to impose your viewpiont, your personal definition of how a principle should be interpreted and upheld, upon a platform… and only because it serves a huge number of people. You made that last distinction, not me.
So why do smaller sites get a free ride? Again, the law as currently enacted makes no distinction regarding the size of platform, why are you doing so? You even admitted that no platform is legally obligated to “uphold the principles of free speech”, then you turn right around and say to us all (and freely, I might point out ironically), that some sites should not take advantage of how the law works, and instead they should adhere to your personal vision of how you’d like them to operate….. within the law or otherwise.
Now, remember that Cardinal Sin I just mentioned? How would you like it if your personal website/platform was trashed as described by Mike? Can you seriously look any of us in the eye and say “But I’m upholding the principles of free speech”, even as your site goes down in flames?
I didn’t think so.
Re:
Thank you for clearly labeling your strawman, at least.
Re:
Do you not think that that is intentionally harassing, encouraging more people to pile on n the harassment? Such an award is not discussion, and it not intended to further the discussion, but rather create an attack on a person.
Re: Re:
That’s the difference between The Onion and The Babylon Bee: The Onion is actual satire, whereas The Babylon Bee is grievance politics wearing a paper bag labelled “satire” over its head.
Re: Yes, your response is a strawman.
I mean, what they’re actually asking for is that their preferred speech not be moderated, but they’re absolutely fine with others speech being moderated, which is exactly why the nonsense claims about being about “free speech principles” are such a joke.
Yeah, so, you’re making up the whole “neutral platforms” thing…
Again, I asked you this in a previous thread, and you ran the goalposts into another state. First, no one is being silenced. But, more importantly, the reality is that the only speech that is being taken down are in cases where it violates policies that are seen as abusive and harassing, which leads the targets of that abuse and harassment to not want to be there.
That means what you’re really asking for is a platform that is not neutral, but one in which certain classes of people are fair game to abuse and harass.
It is, though not in the way you think. It supports my point.
Sure. And Twitter has determined that allowing such mean spirited satire against a group that is regularly harassed, abused, and attacked, has serious consequences for those members of the community. It is not as if there are no places online for assholes to punch down. Twitter is just saying “not here.”
Again, that’s very much in line with free speech principles.
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Re: Re: Twitter's Rules
Twitter says: “Twitter’s purpose is to serve the public conversation. … Our rules are to ensure all people can participate in the public conversation freely and safely.”
Twitter also says: “We prohibit … targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.”
The first statement leans toward the “neutral platforms” concept. The second leans away from it. The two positions are in conflict. The public conversation includes debate on whether transgender individuals are the gender they claim to be. Refusing to allow people to state their side of the debate is the opposite of free speech principles. Refusing to allow people to state their opinions because those opinions will make other people unhappy is the opposite of free speech principles.
None of this is to say that Twitter can’t do whatever it wants. But then their claim that their purpose is to serve the public conversation is a lie. Their purpose is to promote one side of the public conversation and to silence the other. And calling out their lies is not a demand that they be forced to do otherwise. It is simply a calling out of their lies.
You are treating “free speech principles” at the wrong level, which is why you’re in error. It is a free speech principle that a private entity can speak in any way it pleases. In that sense, free speech principles support Twitter’s right to moderate as it chooses, and oppose any requirements that they do otherwise. But for the people who use Twitter as a platform to speak, free speech principles require that all sides of a debate be treated equally. When Twitter silences one side, it is using its own freedom of speech to deny freedom to their users. So Twitter is violating the principles of freedom of speech for is users while benefiting from the government adhering to the principles of freedom of speech for itself.
Re: Re: Re:
How it works in the real world:
Participation in free speech is most harmed when mentally ill people like Hyman Rosen and other transphobes can bully trans people off of all platforms completely with their endless and (as they want) unavoidable baseless and malicious harassment.
Twitter doesn’t want to prevent any person from participating, and they don’t. Anti-free-speech trolls like Hyman Rosen and Koby do.
Re: Re: Re:2
“Malicious lies” vs “Truth” is not a matter for debate. There was never a “side” to be “silenced.”
Re: Re: Re:
This is something made up in your head. The fact that you have trouble understanding basic concepts and apply nonsense motives to things that are otherwise easy to understand is a you problem, dude.
Having such a conversation is different than harassing people. That you can’t see the difference is, again, a you problem.
No one is refusing to allow people to state “their side.” There are plenty of ways to make those arguments without resorting to abuse and harassment.
Bullshit. That’s the whole point I’m making in this article. YOU DO NOT have the right to demand that others host your nonsense speech. If you want to be a complete asshole, go find some other place to do it.
Gosh you are fucking dense. It is not a lie. To serve the public conversation often means doing things like not allowing assholes to destroy that conversation. That you can’t see that is, again, a you problem.
No one who understands “free speech” would ever say such a thing, because it’s meaningless. Because speech doesn’t have “sides.” Because if one “side” (in your opinion) is that all of a certain kind of people should die, that’s not a “side” that encourages free speech. It’s a side that drives it away.
Again, if people want to hold those hateful views, they’re free to find some other place to do it. Twitter position absolutely supports free speech principles by making sure that a large section of the community feels welcome, without being attacked by angry bigots and trolls.
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Re: Re: Re:2 Freedom
At this point, I can only say that this word doesn’t mean what you think it does.
Aside from that, in the case of the Bee the satire was being applied to a highly visible public official. Mocking public figures has been part of freedom of speech since that concept existed.
Aside from that, telling people that their beliefs about themselves are false is not the same as telling them to die. If you believe that Jesus loves you, I am not telling you to die when I tell you that gods don’t exist. And vice versa. Furthermore, people feeling attacked by having their beliefs questioned is not sufficient reason to shut down the questioners.
Aside from that, people have every right to criticize Twitter for refusing to uphold principles of free speech, and asking them to do so. That Twitter has the right not to listen doesn’t change that.
Finally, you get to call me “fucking dense” as much as you like. That’s rather the point.
Re: Re: Re:3
Rather generous, referring to blatant transphobia as “satire”, but you do you.
And you’re free to mock any public figure you want—so long as you’re ready to deal with the consequences of doing so. The phrase “fuck around and find out” (or a swear-free equivalent) should be part of everyone’s lexicon these days.
It is a pretty shitty thing to do, though. I’m an agnostic atheist; though I have my issues with organized religion (especially Christianity), even I know that telling someone they’re stupid for believing in a higher power makes me the asshole. Their belief in God isn’t the issue. What they do in the name of that belief—e.g., pushing anti-trans bills on lawmakers in the hopes of using those bills as a means to backdoor old-school homophobia back into the public consciousness—is what I tend to dislike.
You’re free to criticize Twitter for not allowing all speech, sure. And we’re free to mock you for having such a silly stance on free speech.
Re: Re: Re:
You have no right to free speech on someone else’s property. When you are granted the privilege of speaking on property you don’t own, you can have that privilege revoked for saying something the owners don’t like.
The public conversation is served when more people can participate in it. Moderation upholds that principle by making a platform more palatable for a broader audience.
I wish it worked because goddamn, transphobes like you never seem to shut the fuck up.
Okay but it is tho’.
Yeah, someone saying allies of trans people should be [checks notes] “lined up against wall before a firing squad to be sent to an early judgment” is 100% legitimate political discourse~.
Again: You have no freedom on Twitter. You have a privilege that Twitter can revoke.
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Re: Re: Re:2 Mass Over Volume Attempting To Reproduce
(To quote MM.)
I have no right to free speech on someone else’s property. I have every right to criticize someone for refusing to give me free speech rights on their property, and they have every right not to listen to me.
I have every right to criticize someone for not upholding the principles they claim to have. They have every right not to listen to me.
Telling flat-Earthers that the world is spherical is not the same as saying that flat-Earthers should be pushed off the edge. False beliefs are false no matter how much it hurts the believers to hear that.
Re: Re: Re:3
You do, sure. But when you sound like you’re begging them to give you those rights—and to do so while shielding you from the consequences of your speech—we’re going to call you a dipshit.
Yes, telling trans people “you’re not who you say you are so stop pretending to be what you’re not and be what we say you should be” isn’t the same as telling them “you should be killed for who you are”.
But if the end result is that trans people kill themselves because people like you kept telling them to “stop pretending”…well, it isn’t really much better than telling them to off themselves, is it, you hateful bigot?
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Re: Re: Re:4
I have never asked that anyone be shielded from the consequences of speech. Asking not to be silenced is not the same as asking to be shielded from consequences.
I am not asking trans people to stop pretending to be who they say they are any more than I am asking religious people to stop believing in gods. I am telling trans people and woke gender ideologues that trans people are not what they say they are. I am telling religious people that gods do not exist. Nothing forces them to accept that what I say is true, and I would not force such beliefs on anyone even if I could, as that would be antithetical to the principles of freedom. Even this Supreme Court has decided that the law supports the right of trans people to present on the job as the gender they wish they were.
But by the same token, they cannot force their beliefs on others. The religious should not be allowed to force public schools to teach that creationism is true, and woke gender ideologues should not be allowed to force public schools to teach that woke gender ideology is true, and woke racialists should not be allowed to force public schools to teach that critical race theory is true.
People who decide to kill themselves because the world refuses to affirm their false beliefs need treatment. They should not be permitted to hold the truth hostage by their threats.
Re: Re: Re:5
Let’s put that “silenced” bit into context. You’re talking about being “silenced” on Twitter, which has no obligation to host any third-party speech. By asking Twitter to not silence you (or anyone else), you’re explicitly asking for Twitter to shield you (or someone else) from the consequences of your speech (e.g., getting booted from Twitter).
And in doing so, you’re being a transphobic dickbag who is out to harm the mental health of trans people—possibly as a means of goading them into suicide without actually telling them to kill themselves.
But you will support lawmakers who sign anti-trans bills into law, huh?
Not that you seem to care, given how you’ve been throwing a shit-fit about trans people using public restrooms.
Please cite any example of this happening anywhere in K–12 schools. Be specific with the definition of “woke gender ideologues”, the definition of “woke gender ideology”, and any example of what you claim is happening in the context of those definitions. And don’t give me some Ralph Wiggum–esque “I saw a trans ally talking about trans people in the classroom and the trans ally looked at me and now I’ve got all the gender dysphorias” bullshit, either.
Please cite any example of this happening anywhere in K–12 schools. Be specific with the definition of “woke racialists”, the definition of “critical race theory”, and any example of what you claim is happening in the context of those definitions. And don’t give me some Ralph Wiggum–esque “I saw a Black teacher talking about race in the classroom and the Black teacher looked at me and now I’ve got all the white guilt” bullshit, either.
People who decide to harangue trans people into suicide because of a refusal to merely tolerate the existence of openly trans people need to shut the fuck up. They shouldn’t be permitted to harass trans people into the grave.
Re: Re: Re:5
“People who decide to kill themselves because the world refuses to affirm their false beliefs need treatment. They should not be permitted to hold the truth hostage by their threats.”
And yet you are still here…
Re: Re: Re:
Has never and can never happen.
Re: Re: Re:
No they are not, and that you cannot see the difference between debate and harassment means that you create the harassment that Twitter is trying to avoid.
Re: You word of the day calendar had *isomorphic* on it too?
Oh look the pig fucker showed back up to open his snout to say something stupid.
Re:
The vast bulk of the “robust debate” seems to be one side saying “please treat us with the same amount of respect you expect others to treat you” and the other side saying “you’re mentally ill or immoral or a pedo or an affront to God” (or any combination of those). That’s not a genuine debate by any stretch of the definition, and that second group should not be able to demand access to any community forum that feel like infecting.
At this point I struggle to not see the anti-moderation in the name of ‘free speech’ people as either grossly naive or arguing in bad faith since if don’t moderate it’s not will your platform be overrun by trolls and various flavors of asshole but how quickly.
‘If you don’t like it don’t look at it’ would require perfect filters with everything correctly tagged and everyone required to either set up their own filters or go with a pre-made one and ignores that the entire point for a number of people is to harass others and/or go where they’re not wanted, so that one’s right out.
On top of that a person/group might not be too keen on a platform where they know people/groups vehemently against their existence or equality are known to not just hang out but be welcome by the platform, such that platforms allowing a free-for-all is already limiting their userbase in that way as well.
Or in tl;dr format: If you want to host a party where everyone can have a good time you either boot the person who shows up half naked and making bigoted remarks the door or you’ll quickly find that that sort of person is the only one in the room.
Re: censorship
its time the public get a grip
comments do not need to be censored thats communism
instead they should be given thier own place by way of comment formatting allowing readers more material to consider unless of course thier minds are already closed to information if so good no one cares
anyone in their right man knows americans are pychotic and neurotic and the commenting should allow for freedom of expression
Re: Re:
“comments do not need to be censored thats communism”
So, is your assertion that McCarthyism – where people were censored, fired and even forced to extradite themselves from the country because they were accused of being communists was… communism?
“anyone in their right man knows americans are pychotic and neurotic and the commenting should allow for freedom of expression”
Anyone in their right mind would understand that psychotic and neurotic people tend to attack people they perceive as less than they are, and that suggests people need protection from abuse.
Signal to Noise Ratio
I find that the biggest problem with forums is their signal to noise ratio. When a site is small, you can afford to have that one guy who responds to everyone with often incorrect or immaterial information. You can still read the other comments and enjoy the interaction while glossing over the irrelevant stuff. But if you look at the number of people posting normal comments vs. people posting vitriol and compare it to the actual output of both these groups, the trolls tends to produce a great deal more. So as your forum grows and you attract more people, the amount of pointless material grows until people can no longer actively engage with each other on the forum. Of course, this is the goal of some people.
What I’d like to know is how we contend with sites that do very little content moderation of their communities but continue to thrive because their success and stability are entirely separated from having to do content moderation.
Example: The comments section of the libertarian news site Reason. Click on any given article and you’ll find it rife with right-wing authoritarian trolls who are overtly hostile to anybody who disagrees with them. At the start of each comments section, they have:
And “Report Abuses” right after that, which is a link to the webmaster email address which probably does nothing.
Reason’s comments are a morass of bigotry, spam, rage against authors who have the gall to stand up for libertarian ideals (seriously, the articles where authors voice their disagreement with shit like Trump’s racist bullshit or Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton’s more recent anti-trans orders are vile) and persistent harassment of other commenters. And yet, one would assume that such a news website with an unmoderated community would fall apart due to failure to attract more people.
The site’s continued existence in spite of its toxic hellpit of a community runs counter to the idea in your article, “that ‘never’ is not an answer that works here.”
Reason/The Reason Foundation has strong ties to moneyed right-wing interests and is therefore not beholden to any community on their site or need to ensure that their comments section is moderated. What are people supposed to do about a site like this being largely shielded from any consequence?
Re:
What are people supposed to do about a site like this being largely shielded from any consequence?
… not use it?
If they’re fine with a toxic comment section and those wading through it are doing so because they want to then have at it, the problem is when people want to act like that in communities/platforms that aren’t interested in hosting that sort of user/content.
Re: Re: newspaper censorship
thats completely untrue you are suggesting because someone reads an article they become that article so you must believe that because a man looks at a woman in want that he should pluck out his eyeballs my suggestion is that you pluck out yours and redeem yourself because you are a hateful fool
Re:
4chan has a largely similar moderation ethos, but it still cleans up bullshit (e.g., spam) when it has to—which I imagine Reason does as well. That its comments sections are a quagmire of hatred and right-wing idiocy doesn’t negate the “ ‘never’ is not an answer” idea. If anything, the comments largely being full of that shit means Reason admins are okay with that content, which…hey, their site, their rules.
I can disagree with what speech Reason allows in those comments sections while also saying it’s their right to allow it. But I refuse to believe they don’t moderate the comments sections in any way—even if it’s preëmptive moderation such as CAPTCHAs to prevent spam.
Re:
They aren’t shielded, not even by money. The problem is your interpretation. You call them a cesspit, they call themselves a community like-minded people who are freely speaking their minds. Such participants don’t shut themselves down, that’s why “they’re going strong” despite the crap comments. Most others, like you were advised by TOG, simply don’t come back. That is always an option.
Which then says, you also misinterpreted the statement “never is not an answer that works here”. In the case at bar, the ‘never’ means never coming back. Nuance, my friend, nuance. 😉
Re:
YouTube’s comment section would like a word…
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Re: When The Comments Are Toxic...
…don’t read the comments.
The Reason website, or at least a law blog hosted there, The Volokh Conspiracy, has generally well-written and interesting articles by a stable of libertarian-leaning law professors. As you say, the comments are garbage. So don’t read them. It’s usually the same crew going around in circles anyway, contributing nothing to the conversation.
Also, not long ago, they added the ability for users to block commenters by name, so you can just prune away the idiots as you encounter them and not have to see their posts. And that way, it’s users who get to moderate their own feeds instead of having others decide what they should see.
Re: Re:
And aren’t you Gawd-awful glad that we can’t do that here?! Tell us, how long did it take you to realize that no one was responding to your shit posts over there at Reason, once you learned that such a filter was in play?
Re: Re:
What this illustrates is that letting sites do their own thing is a good thing. Reason can explore their approach to curating feeds, and other sites can explore their own approaches to moderation.
A possible problem with pure blocking is someone never learns from it. If someone never gets negative feedback, and they keep behaving like an asshole, they’ll just keep behaving like an asshole.
There’s a difference between an asshole and an idiot.
If someone’s attacking the author, alluding to them being a predator, because they think sex offender laws are a bit harsh, or picking fights with people on every article, that’s normally grounds for a ban elsewhere.
I don’t know why Reason tolerates that, frankly. Most others wouldn’t. But, their house, their rules. If they’re willing to put up with that, that’s their prerogative.
I understand them creating a marketplace of ideas in their comments, to conform with their libertarian ideology. I understand allowing assholes far less.
This isn’t even “he was a bit mean” territory. This is truly vile stuff.
I would really like someone to show actual harm done to people by “cancel culture”.
People speak about this like its some sort of shunning in an Amish community, that the cancelled people are unable to live because no one in the community will interact with them at all & they must leave or starve.
A majority of cancelled people don’t seem to be suffering, because I keep hearing them scream about how wrong them being cancelled is. Its like “cancel culture” is just some sort of fundraising performance art. And many of the cancelled have a BUNCH of people/comments they demand be “cancelled” but they never call it that when they want it.
To be so far into victimhood that you can have a seat in the highest government offices, but no one can hear you because FB decided your rant about jewish space lasers causing forest fires wasn’t right for their community standards.
Of course they have no problems demanding that everyone else adhere to their community standards, often using the force of law to set the standards to make sure they never have to hear things they disagree with… try to say gay in a classroom in FL, but magically those “most cancelled” people want the law to cancel the person who said it.
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Re: Cancel Culture Harm
See Professor Jason Kilborn, for example.
Re: Re: The facts are hardly undisputed in your example
“Some law students have a different story than Kilborn’s version of events. Erica Fatima, a 3L and a member of the BLSA chapter, says there’s a history of race-related complaints involving Kilborn,”
You maybe want to take a second bite at that apple?
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Re: Re: Re:
Why do I need a second bite? That’s a perfectly good example of cancel culture.
Re: Re: Re:2
Actually you are 100% correct…juuusssttt not in the way you intended.
Re: Re: Re:2
Please explain how that case is a case of “cancel culture” and not a case of “fucking around and finding out”. Be detailed in your explanation and avoid phrases such as “woke [x]” that have no widely agreed-upon definition.
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Re: Re: Re:3 Law and the "n word"
https://reason.com/volokh/2022/03/31/trial-court-focused-too-much-on-racial-slurs-by-defendant-towards-police-officers/
This is an example of a legal case that must consider how a woman yelling “fuck you, nigger” at a Black police officer impacted her conviction for obstructing the police, including 1st Amendment concerns.
It should go without saying that in the real world, lawyers will encounter uses of this word, no matter how tender their sensibilities. If they are to ably represent their clients, they will not have the choice of avoiding reading, writing, or saying the word.
There are also fun issues around testimony. You can imagine a witness talking about the “n word” and other people not knowing whether someone literally said “n word” or the witness was using the euphemism.
Finally, court reporters have to faithfully record everything said, even if it involves words they find offensive or triggering.
Re: Re: Re:4
How does any of that directly relate to the Professor Jason Kilborn case you were talking about earlier?
Re: Re: Oh theres this gem too
“Allegations the office found to be substantiated include Kilborn in a January 2020 lecture dismissing a Black student’s view that his comments were overgeneralizing references to people of color, referring to racial minorities as “cockroaches,” and denouncing their participation in civil rights claims.”
Really? That’s the best example you got?!?
Re: Re:
So you admit you’ve got nothing.
Ever hear of the marketplace of ideas?
Moderation is the market at work.
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Conservatives loved the marketplace of ideas until their ideas were rejected by the same marketplace.
Re: Re:
That’s how they feel about markets in general, really.
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‘The government has no business telling private companies what they can and can not do, the free market will deal with any theoretical problems!’
‘The free market has decided that you are a problem and has taken steps to deal with you.’
‘Screw the free market, break out the regulations!’
Re: Re: Re:2
Modern conservatives are fine with the government picking winners and losers, as long as they’re the winners.
Re: Re: Re:
I’ve said this before, but these champions of the free market switch awfully quickly to demanding that the government seize the means of production if the market rules against them. They’re “free market capitalists” right up until the moment where literal communism and fascism help their needs, then they unironically demand that Mao and Stalin get involved.
Same thing with free speech – they’re all for free speech until someone exercises their own free speech against them, then all of a sudden they’re demanding that the right is restricted or removed (but only for “those people”, they still demand freedom of speech without consequences from private actors, something that no version of free speech has ever guaranteed).
Re: Re:
So they can’t find anyone in the marketplace of ideas to buy what they’re selling.
Can’t-sell culture.
Re: Re:
You mean, “The Left loved the marketplace of ideas until their ideas were rejected by the same marketplace.”
The PEOPLE (the actual marketplace of ideas) rejects your censorship and propaganda.
Only by using gaslighting, monopolization, and the force of billions of dollars from private interests can you get people to temporarily buy into your BS.
Its not a matter of moderation
What we are seeing on social media networks is one way tolerance. Where people with differing views are silenced and canceled, and this only goes in one direction, left canceling right.
Re: Oh good, I get to break this out again.
Conservative: I have been censored for my conservative views
Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes?
Con: LOL no…no not those views
Me: So…deregulation?
Con: Haha no not those views either
Me: Which views, exactly?
Con: Oh, you know the ones
(All credit to Twitter user @ndrew_lawrence.)
Re: Ah consequences, how you have been redefined...
Which ‘views’ are being ‘silenced and cancelled’, be specific.
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… said nobody not on a steady diet of potent hallucinogens, ever.
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“people with differing views are silenced”
I’d love to see examples of this, since they’re never provided. All I ever see is whiny bullies being told to pipe down then never shutting up about it.
I never see anyone with genuine differing views being “silenced”. All I see is assholes shouting as loud as they can when they’re told to stop being assholes.
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It more those that treat all people as people stay on the major platforms, and those that treat some people as inferior getting thrown out. That you claim that it has to do with right politics, is damming of right politics.
Re: Re:
It’s not even that. Go to any right-wing leaning site, forum or subreddit and you’ll see people getting banned pretty damn quickly for espousing actual opposing views.
The only real differences are that the right-wing echo chambers tend to be a lot less mainstream than the “left” leaning ones so they get a lot less attention, and the people getting banned from them are more likely to laugh and move on to somewhere else than start whining about oppression.
“That you claim that it has to do with right politics, is damming of right politics.”
As others have noted, people don’t tend to get banned for actual “conservative” views like discussing tax expenditure or free market business ideals. It’s almost always hatred. See in these threads recently where the whining about Babylon Bee having suffered consequences for transphobic hatred has only thus far been backed up with negative claims about the existence of trans people. Which in itself has only become a major issue on the right after it because clear that gay people aren’t the soft target they used to be and most people accept their right to live as straight people do.
If they want to claim that being on the “right” requires you to be a seething ball of hatred who can only express themselves by lashing out at a perceived soft target, they’re probably not wrong but they also answered their own question as to why online moderation skews against them.
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First of all, this is false. Moderation quite frequently hits marginalized communities the hardest. LGBTQ communities often are moderated, as are people of color trying to expose and discuss racism.
The idea that moderation only hits one side of the political spectrum is ignorance.
Second, moderation is not “canceling,” it’s an attempt to deal with rule violations, and at that scale sometimes mistakes are made.
Re: Re:
The left cancelling the right is so over-simplified.
The most censored speech tends to be sexy speech. That comes from religious conservative pressure on platforms, investors, employees, payment processors, anyone they can find.
Conservatives don’t even consider it censorship. They see it as moderation. They special plead in a way which never applies to their activities to clumsily try to justify it.
Sometimes, they find someone nominally on the left to promote their ideas, by trying to frame it in ways they’d like. But, it always leads back to them.
Re: Re: Re:
It’s the same song over and over again – their speech is absolute, no matter how many it offends. But, if they are offended, that speech should be suppressed.
Same thing with “cancel culture”. The right have been trying to “cancel” everything from any source that they find unacceptable, from singers who dare have differing political views to entire industries that they can scapegoat for their own poor governance. But, when they found themselves suffering consequences for advocating homophobic or racist violence, or for spreading deadly misinformation during a global pandemic, it’s unacceptable that they face those consequences and it must be stopped.
But, they can’t come right out and say that moderation or boycotts are bad because they want to continue using those tactics themselves, so they rebrand things as “censorship” or “cancel culture” to pretend they’re different from what they’re doing.
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Professor Kilborn presented a hypothetical case where the word was used. In his hypothetical, he expressed it as “n_____’ rather than using the word itself. Then the special woke snowflakes complained about it, and as usual, the craven administrators censured him.
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Here’s the thing, using those abbreviations in the exam was totally unnecessary since they had no bearing on it at all.
Then we have Professor Killborn’s prior behavior like calling racial minorities “cockroaches” or how he likened news stories about white men behaving like assholes to “lynchings”.
I’m sure you’ll get along just fine with the Professor if you ever meet.
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There was a lot more to it than that, as has already been pointed out to you. You’re just oversimplifying it to the point of error.
The only aspect of content moderation, that, in my opinion, if it exists, makes it less supportive of free speech, is if decisions cannot easily be appealed (assuming nobody spams, gets all the content removed, and appeals all of it clogging up the appeals process). Otherwise, content moderation is generally a good thing (and if you don’t like the rules, then go somewhere else with rules you agree with).
Re:
Free speech has limits, and those limits do not protect you from reactions from other private citizens. No free speech is violated if you say something offensive and you’re asked to leave the restaurant where you just offended a bunch of people.
Where those limits are will always be a controversial thing to discuss and many people will never agree on where the lines are. But, it’s ultimately on the owner of the property (and by extension, the community within that property) as to where the lines are. This is not a problem online any more than it was offline, unless you have people trying to pretend that a service being popular means that they lose their own rights to free speech and free association.
Your entire argument is “Censorship is free speech, actually!” BS. Propaganda.
Re:
So you’re against spam filters because it’s censorship?
And, please share with me your address, so I can cover your home in Biden signs. If you don’t let me, why are you pro-censorship?
Spam is a bad example
This is wrong:
“But the reality is a lot more nuanced, to the point that content moderation clearly actually enables more free speech. First, let’s look at the world without any content moderation. A website that has no content moderation but allows anyone to post will fill up with spam. Even this tiny website gets thousands of spam comments a day. Most of them are (thankfully) caught by the layers upon layers of filtering tools we’ve set up.”
Philosophical or ethical arguments shouldn’t mix current technological constraints. Maybe content moderation is today the best way to make it manageable to process a lot of content but that’s all. Next sentence exactly shows why it is a problem:
“But once you’ve admitted that it’s okay to filter spam, you’ve already admitted that content moderation is okay — you’re just haggling over how much and where to draw the lines.”
Why does Gmail still have a spam folder? Where can I see what Twitter considers is spam to me? Gmail gives me agency (I can move mails from spam and mark them ok), Twitter doesn’t (no clue what is being restricted).
Content moderation is about opinions and opinions are the enemy of free speech. If the user doesn’t have any agency or insights into what is being moderated, it is censorship.
Now, Twitter as a privately owned company of course has all the right to moderate content, so that, in their opinion, they can provide better UX. Twitter is opinionated. But they are not a free speech platform. If they wanted to be that, content moderation, for example, would happen on the UI level while the protocol is unrestricted and gives users agency.
This wouldn’t be problematic or relevant if Twitter wouldn’t be so big that it de facto acts as a public broadcast utility – this calls for regulation and opening it up.
Re: Well, really Twitter shouldn't
Really, Twitter shouldn’t be where governments promulgate anything. It should be a mastodon instance.
Letting infrastructure be in private hands is bad. That we have allowed that, or that that has happened organically, is still not good.
Re: Re:
True, but your problem is ISPs, in that case. When Twitter dies (and it looks to be sooner rather than later), public agencies might pick something more open – depending on where the public chooses to go (and recent evidence suggests it won’t be Mastodon), – but they still have the depend on private corporations to access whichever they choose.
free speech
Free speech is essential to any free society. My friend, who is a lifestyle photographer prague and a staunch defender of free expression, used to work for a social media site. content moderation did seem to promote not only free speech, but measured, rational speech, too.