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> Wait, what? 2009-2013 Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook were moderating content. But not censoring. You could pretty much say and do anything on those platforms

> Wait, what? 2009-2013 Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook were moderating content. But not censoring. You could pretty much say and do anything on those platforms except for illegal content. > Forums, usergroups, mailing lists, blog comments, etc... have always been moderated for spam, trolling, abuse, and just bad actors in general. Which is different from censoring. > Even platforms like Gab still have moderation today. Gab always had moderation. Either people haven't used 2009-2013 twitter, reddit, facebook, etc or people are pushing some heavy revisionist history here. Reddit, especially branded itself the "free speech platform" in that time period. I'm okay with moderation, I'm against censorship. For example, I'm all for a sports subreddit/community limiting the content to sports. And I'm for the users saying anything they want about the sports topic, even if it offends people. See the difference? It's funny how every response to me was by people who intentionally confused moderation with censorship. And locking the wikileaks account isn't moderation, it's censorship.

danShumway 7y ago
What do you think the difference is between moderation and censorship? Because Reddit/Twitter/Facebook in 2009-2013 didn't just remove illegal content. They removed tons of legal content too. They removed spam. Facebook removed pornography. Reddit in particular allowed individual subreddits to moderate/censor basically on any criteria whatsoever. If you went into a random forum in 2009 about dogs and started spouting nonsense about how we should all eat dogs, you would get kicked off of that forum. They wouldn't patiently hear out your controversial point-of-view. Go back and read some of the usenet threads from this time period, there are people getting banned just as a joke; the paradigm of 'benevolent dictators' running forums was already pretty widely accepted. What definition of censorship do you have that doesn't include removing explicit content, self-promotion, and off-topic posts?

danShumway 7y ago

What do you think the difference is between moderation and censorship? Because Reddit/Twitter/Facebook in 2009-2013 didn't just remove illegal content. They removed tons of legal content too. They removed spam. Facebook removed pornography. Reddit in particular allowed individual subreddits to moderate/censor basically on any criteria whatsoever. If you went into a random forum in 2009 about dogs and started spouting nonsense about how we should all eat dogs, you would get kicked off of that forum. They wouldn't patiently hear out your controversial point-of-view. Go back and read some of the usenet threads from this time period, there are people getting banned just as a joke; the paradigm of 'benevolent dictators' running forums was already pretty widely accepted. What definition of censorship do you have that doesn't include removing explicit content, self-promotion, and off-topic posts?