zlacker

>>feross+(OP)
I feel this piece, like a lot of moderation/censorship rhetoric, starts from a disingenuous place.

Free speech, moderation, editing, censorship, propaganda, and such do not have clear definitions. The terms have a history. Social media is new, and most of the nuance needs to be invented/debated. There aren't a priori definitions.

This article is defining censorship as X and moderation as Y... Actually, it provides 2 unrelated definitions.

Definition 1 seems to be that moderation is "normal business activity" and censorship is "abnormal, people-in-power activity" on behalf of "3rd parties," mostly governments.

Definition 2, the article's "moderation MVP" implies that opt-out filters represent "moderation" while outright content removal is, presumably, censorship.

IMO this is completely ridiculous, especially the China example. China's censorship already does, work like this article's "moderation MVP". Internet users can, with some additional effort, view "banned content" by using a VPN. In practice, most people use the default, firewalled internet most of the time.

Youtube's censorship is, similarly, built of the same stuff. Content can be age-gated, demonetized or buried. Sure, there is some space between banned and penalized... but no one is going to see it and posting it is bad for your youtuber career to post it. This discourages most of it.

IMO, the difference between censorship and moderation is power, and power alone. A small web forum can do whatever it likes and it's moderation. If a government, medium monopoly, cartel, cabal or whatnot do it.... it is censorship. If a book is banned from a book stall, that's moderation. If it is banned from amazon... that's censorship.

If amazon have a settings toggle where you can unhide banned books does not change anything that matters. A book that amazon won't sell is a book that probably won't be printed in the first place. That's how censorship actually works. It's not just about filtering bad content. It's about disincentivizing it's existence entirely. Toggles work just fine for that.

>>dalbas+hG
I find it problematic when the prerogative to speak entails a necessary monetary cost to be paid by someone else for amplification and discovery, and that money is private money. Engineers aren’t plentiful or cheap.

If hypothetically every metaphorical YouTube should close for business because perhaps governments shut down ad funding, or if YouTube starts charging money, is my prerogative of speech in peril?

And if AT&T and all the other phone companies converge on the position that I must pay big bucks to talk to people, is that censorship? It’s not like I can easily find a free version of AT&T.

If I am enormously underpowered that I cannot bid for speaking time on TV, is that censorship? I’m basically an incompetent David bidding against Goliaths.

>>threat+MP
>If hypothetically every metaphorical YouTube should close for business because perhaps governments shut down ad funding, or if YouTube starts charging money, is my prerogative of speech in peril?

No because it's not related to your specific content.

Even if you were to make the argument that X content doesn't make money and costs too much, if someone pulls the trigger without giving you recourse to resolve issues, then it is violation of free speech.

In your example, if AT&T tells you that you must pay more money to say certain topics, then it's a violation.

If it costs money, it costs money, nothing wrong with that. The issue is intent.

>>drekip+RQ
The counterpoint to this is that putting in a barrier that only some people can pass can work as censorship. If you raise the price very high, then only people with lots of money can use it. This means all (or at the vast majority of) of the content is that which is desirable by the very rich. So by raising the price to a high level you are censoring content that is of interest to the poor but not the rich.

This is actually exactly how big media/big politics operates.