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I've reached the conclusion that this is not about censorship. It's really about attempting to force ideas into the definition of "the mainstream". Facebook an

I've reached the conclusion that this is not about censorship. It's really about attempting to force ideas into the definition of "the mainstream". Facebook and Twitter legitimize content. From a social media perspective, they define the vanilla. When people say "I saw it on Facebook", you instinctively intuit it was on their feed between a photo of a kid and advert for Red Robin. If you want rocky road rather than vanilla, you can go find it on (2^n)chan. It's not hard to find. The presence of FaceTwit doesn't stop those forums existing or censor them. When the President has a tweet deleted or some covid conspiracy group is removed from Facebook, it's not that there isn't somewhere else that content could go. I mean Trump is literally continuously on TV and has the entire Federal government at his disposal to get his message out. The covid conspiracy nuts can go to some smaller/madder corner of the Internet. The reason to raise a ruckus is because being kept out of TwitFace means being kept out of the mainstream. I saw the Proud Boys update next to that cute GAP ad. I got the latest @QAnon post after the one from @KimKardashian. To hell with that. Don't normalize that garbage. Moderate away.

jakelazaroff 6y ago
> I've reached the conclusion that this is not about censorship. It's really about attempting to force ideas into the definition of "the mainstream". Of course. That's why the people crying about the NY Post article said nothing when Twitter was threatening to suspend accounts for hoping Trump would die of COVID. It's why they're fine when conservative content gets algorithmically boosted but nut when it gets penalized. I'm happy to have a discussion about what the boundaries of acceptable speech should be. But it always gets cast as a discussion about censorship and freedom of speech, when really the goal is to shift those boundaries to a place they find acceptable.

jakelazaroff 6y ago

> I've reached the conclusion that this is not about censorship. It's really about attempting to force ideas into the definition of "the mainstream". Of course. That's why the people crying about the NY Post article said nothing when Twitter was threatening to suspend accounts for hoping Trump would die of COVID. It's why they're fine when conservative content gets algorithmically boosted but nut when it gets penalized. I'm happy to have a discussion about what the boundaries of acceptable speech should be. But it always gets cast as a discussion about censorship and freedom of speech, when really the goal is to shift those boundaries to a place they find acceptable.