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On the contrary, disallowing low-effort garbage to drown out all attempts at discourse is a type of censorship that makes room for quality discussion. Abstract
by Deestan 9y ago
On the contrary, disallowing low-effort garbage to drown out all attempts at discourse is a type of censorship that makes room for quality discussion.
Abstracting all communication as "speech" and therefore "free speech" and therefore "censorship" means not differentiating between discussing local traffic policy with a group of informed people, and having everyone listen to the loud smelly drunk who sat down at your table to tell jokes about negroes.
- neolefty 9y agoYes, I'd say that free speech—like many things—gets harder with scale. When a small number of trolls can derail a conversation, you get denial-of-service attacks against civil discourse and democracy. > having everyone listen to the loud smelly drunk who sat down at your table to tell jokes about negroes For example, the article talks about a mismatch between moderation tools and trolling: > Internally, Costolo complained that the “abuse economics” were “backward.” It took just seconds to create an account to harass someone, but reporting that abuse required filling out a time-consuming form.
- nukeop 9y agoOnce you start perceiving people whose opinions you don't like as "loud smelly drunks" you're already too far down the rabbit hole to understand the importance of keeping moderation to the absolute minimum (which means keeping out spammers, illegal content and people behaving destructively towards the platform only). The best forums I've ever been on were those where there were no ratings whatsoever, a linear structure of discussion, and that allowed any range of opinions as long as they were not in the aforementioned groups.