zlacker

>>feross+(OP)
I think something that really bothers me about this discussion about moderation is how many people approach this debate like a new born baby. They have an idea and then speculate on how it fixes everything. There's never any discussion of what exists in the real world. ACX here is essentially describing some key attributes of reddit. Each sub-reddit has it's own moderation team that decides what's acceptable and then you opt-in. This is pretty close to what ACX is proposing.

So let's look at what happened in reality. Almost immediately sub-reddits pop up that are at the very least attempting to skirt the law, and often directly breaching the law- popular topics on reddit included creative interpretations of the age of consent for example, or indeed the requirement for consent at all. Oh and because anyone can create one these communities, the site turns into whack-a-mole.

The second thing that happened was communities popped up pretty much for the sole purpose of harassing's other communities. But enabling this sort of market place of moderation, you are providing a mechanism for a group of people to organize a way to attack your own platform. So now you have to step back in and we're back to censorship.

I also think that this article completely mischaracterizes what the free speech side of the debate want.

>>Silver+hP
I think Reddit is a terrible example. The moderators are volunteers, the rules and their application seem entirely arbitrary, and there is no way to opt out.

The key point the author of the article makes is the difference between moderation and censorship: you can opt-in to see moderated content, but you're unilaterally prevented from seeing censored content.

What Reddit does (removing posts, comments, banning accounts) falls under the definition of censorship here -- within the platform itself, obviously.