zlacker

>>southe+(OP)
When the platforms starting censoring during the pandemic and last election cycle I remember saying they better get it right 100% of the time because the moment they get it wrong their credibility is shot. Hear we are.

Censorship, beyond what’s required by law, is doomed to fail.

>>chasd0+u8
They were already doing censorship, just for different things - there was never a free for all because that eventually ends up like 4chan which is not advertiser-friendly.

So you can lose credibility two ways, one by not doing any censorship because people on the internet will be the worst if you let them. Doing too much censorship is also bad because people don't like that either. Of the big causes of censorship currently, I think of things like youtubes copyright claim process and how that is routinely used as a censorship backdoor by anyone - including the police. Sometimes its not even for any good reason and done by unthinking bots. This is banning more perfectly fine content than anything the government has done. I don't understand why there isn't more pushback against that process to punish people for frivolous claims.

>>Eddy_V+Db
> They were already doing censorship, just for different things - there was never a free for all because that eventually ends up like 4chan which is not advertiser-friendly.

If you look at every attempt to create "The Uncensored Free Speech Version Of [ANY_SERVICE]," they all, inevitably turned into a 4chan-like trashfire. You've got to have some kind of moderation.

>>ryandr+wt
This is where I really feel my age. Every message board and chatroom (bbs, forums, irc, icq, aol, et all) on the young internet was virtually uncensored and a 100% free for all, yet we all mostly got by. You went to the places you knew to go to. The communities mostly self moderated by kicks/bans. It worked really well.

So whats changed?

Well, I have my thoughts, but one thing is for sure, as soon as the platform itself tried to start moderating, that's when things really started changing.

>>dimitr+sR
The internet used to be primarily used by geekier, smarter, tech people, and it used to not be a good propaganda/manipulation target since only a subset of the population used it. Media/newspapers were still the primary propaganda channel.

Now that the entire population uses it, the average IQ involved has plummeted, and the political and social payoff for manipulating it with inauthentic content is huge.

>>thegri+6T
>Now that the entire population uses it, the average IQ involved has plummeted, and the political and social payoff for manipulating it with inauthentic content is huge.

You have made an important statement which while simple - most people don't really understand the full spectrum of implications. A substantial proportions of the people are really are ungovernable - online or otherwise, they simply stoop too low. Like they say: you cannot fix stupid.