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That's beside the point I was making, as I said; >You can argue whether or not moderation is necessary or not but it most definitely is censorship. Moderation

by rnd0 5y ago

That's beside the point I was making, as I said; >You can argue whether or not moderation is necessary or not but it most definitely is censorship. Moderation is censorship, and censorship is evil. It may be a necessary evil (because liability if nothing else) but it needs to be seen and treated as evil. Meaning to be used as sparingly as possible.

seattle_spring 5y ago
What's your definition of evil?
- rnd0 5y ago
  That's an almost impossibly broad question to answer. In the context of this conversation? Moderation is evil because it is destructive, repressive, exploitable for the cause of tyranny (eg silencing dissent) and is the opposite of that which is good (freedom of expression, freedom of thought, free flow of information). Like any other violence, there are times when it's warrented but it's always a balance. The greater good is to keep the forum open, so it's necessary to remove illegal materials. And that's an easy call when what is illegal is child pornography; but what about when what is illegal is a political message or even just a series of seemingly random numbers? Sometimes it's the lesser evil (child porn is always the greater evil) and sometimes moderation is the greater evil (repressing political messages or being used in the service of propping up totalitarian regimes). I apologize if this doesn't make things clearer for you. As I said at the beginning; the nature of evil is a broad question that has been wrestled by philosophers for millennia.
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    Some would say that what is true is good, and what is false is evil, when it comes to communicating or sharing knowledge. In that case Facebook is doing the right thing.
- eurasiantiger 5y ago
  Evil is a fundamental attribution error. Sure, people do bad things, but it’s not ”evil people” who do bad things — it’s just people, the same people who have the capacity to do good things also do bad things.
michaelmrose 5y ago
Censorship is contextually a good not an evil. No matter how divergent our positions there is almost certainly content that both us if asked to rate it would rate negatively. That is to say that the net value of the forum increases as we delete more of it.

by rnd0 5y ago

seattle_spring 5y ago

What's your definition of evil?

rnd0 5y ago
That's an almost impossibly broad question to answer. In the context of this conversation? Moderation is evil because it is destructive, repressive, exploitable for the cause of tyranny (eg silencing dissent) and is the opposite of that which is good (freedom of expression, freedom of thought, free flow of information). Like any other violence, there are times when it's warrented but it's always a balance. The greater good is to keep the forum open, so it's necessary to remove illegal materials. And that's an easy call when what is illegal is child pornography; but what about when what is illegal is a political message or even just a series of seemingly random numbers? Sometimes it's the lesser evil (child porn is always the greater evil) and sometimes moderation is the greater evil (repressing political messages or being used in the service of propping up totalitarian regimes). I apologize if this doesn't make things clearer for you. As I said at the beginning; the nature of evil is a broad question that has been wrestled by philosophers for millennia.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  Some would say that what is true is good, and what is false is evil, when it comes to communicating or sharing knowledge. In that case Facebook is doing the right thing.
eurasiantiger 5y ago
Evil is a fundamental attribution error. Sure, people do bad things, but it’s not ”evil people” who do bad things — it’s just people, the same people who have the capacity to do good things also do bad things.

michaelmrose 5y ago

Censorship is contextually a good not an evil. No matter how divergent our positions there is almost certainly content that both us if asked to rate it would rate negatively. That is to say that the net value of the forum increases as we delete more of it.