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It is definitely the species that is doing the heavy lifting. I saw what happened on a subreddit with a lassiez faire approach to moderating. It started out w

It is definitely the species that is doing the heavy lifting. I saw what happened on a subreddit with a lassiez faire approach to moderating. It started out with nice ideals, and as the political discussion began, it went to places no one should see. Moderation was required, censorship was required. Reddit is volunteer based, you can see what happens when you let people to their own devices. That experiment has been run ad infinitum at this point. Secondly - the platforms don't want to be moderating content. They would ideally have Zero negative or law breaking content exist. That would mean that there is never a need for an additional cost center, with ever increasing fractal complexity on legal, human resources, policy and political fronts. The top comment in this submission discussed the cost to conspiracy theoriests, if they were officially banned. That is more than an acceptable price to pay, since the alternative is the widespread infection of more people to the virus. In analogy terms - we have never had such a connected market place of ideas. Thoughts can be created and distributed at scale, in a way our species was never prepared to consider or defend against. If viral ideas, which are designed to slip past cracks in our mental defenses, are left alone - they will proliferate. That they will be emboldened is a minor tertiary effect compared to the massive primary damage of conspiracy theories.

konjin 6y ago
>That they will be emboldened is a minor tertiary effect compared to the massive primary damage of conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories like the Earth orbiting the sun. No, a society that is based on keeping people ignorant is a society that's not worth being called one. It's a thought police state that makes citizens into children who believe whatever the powers on high tell them to believe.
- intended 6y ago
  This is the old guard idea, I too was a proponent, then I had to deal with figuring out what it meant to moderate content online and this idea just ends. The market place of ideas is flawed in practice, as much as it may be a great metaphor in discussion. In practice there are too many weaknesses, asymmetries, and lopsidedness of time and obsession for conversations online to naturally support a market place of rational ideas. If you want an emotion and superstition filled market place carrying only the most addictive, neuro invasive ideas, then going with the old guard way is a good way of achieving it. Unless you have a solution for the problem of content, then this idea is only a first draft, and not applicable in its unalloyed form.
  - konjin 6y ago
    Did you consider charging people for signing up and posts they made? It turns out that when people have to pay for extra posts past the first three a day they get a lot more circumspect in what they say. I set up a mailing list with that feature once upon a time and the quality of posts was astronomical.

konjin 6y ago

>That they will be emboldened is a minor tertiary effect compared to the massive primary damage of conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories like the Earth orbiting the sun. No, a society that is based on keeping people ignorant is a society that's not worth being called one. It's a thought police state that makes citizens into children who believe whatever the powers on high tell them to believe.

intended 6y ago
This is the old guard idea, I too was a proponent, then I had to deal with figuring out what it meant to moderate content online and this idea just ends. The market place of ideas is flawed in practice, as much as it may be a great metaphor in discussion. In practice there are too many weaknesses, asymmetries, and lopsidedness of time and obsession for conversations online to naturally support a market place of rational ideas. If you want an emotion and superstition filled market place carrying only the most addictive, neuro invasive ideas, then going with the old guard way is a good way of achieving it. Unless you have a solution for the problem of content, then this idea is only a first draft, and not applicable in its unalloyed form.
- konjin 6y ago
  Did you consider charging people for signing up and posts they made? It turns out that when people have to pay for extra posts past the first three a day they get a lot more circumspect in what they say. I set up a mailing list with that feature once upon a time and the quality of posts was astronomical.