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.
Twitter (let’s face it we’re talking about Twitter) is not the world. It’s certainly a popular place for people to yell at each other and increase the general level of aggravation in the world. But it isn’t the world. If someone is moderated off twitter, their ability to speak is impacted, but only to one audience and in one way. Their ability to speak to me is unaffected entirely because I think Twitter is a giant waste of everyone’s time and energy. They can speak elsewhere, other platforms can serve their needs, and if they are popular enough then they’ll take the users and the attention from Twitter. Regulation here would only entrench the platform.
Twitter it not the public square, it’s some private company’s arguing arena.
The USA has privatized its public commons, with exception of a library and city hall.
Twitter, Facebook, etc are the 21st c USA public commons. It's where the people are. It's where the local politicians are.
The downside: it's owned by corporate privateers who extract wealth from dissent.
Yes it's popular and yes there's a lot of people on it and using it, but that doesn't make it a public commons, its ownership does.
>Yes it's popular and yes there's a lot of people on it and using it, but that doesn't make it a public commons, its ownership does.
Exactly. Folks who complain about the (lack of) moderation on some corporation's platform are, for the most part, certainly welcome to do so.
However, those corporate platforms (unlike public platforms) have no responsibility to host anything they don't want to host.
They are not your government. They are not your friends. They are not a public square. They are businesses whose goal is profit. And that goal isn't necessarily a bad goal either.
However, the business models of those corporate platforms are dependent on showing ads to those who use those platforms. That creates a variety of perverse incentives, including (but not limited to) boosting engagement by pushing outrage and fear buttons to keep folks on the platform, watching the ads.
And so I ask, does the above sound like a public square? It certainly doesn't to me. Rather, it sounds like a bunch of corporate actors taking whatever steps (regardless of impact on discourse) to maximize profit.
Again, that's not inherently a bad thing. But it doesn't (and never will) fit the bill for a "public square."