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In particular, it used to be called "forum moderation" until that was deliberately conflated with censorship by far-right groups, angry at their loss of audienc

In particular, it used to be called "forum moderation" until that was deliberately conflated with censorship by far-right groups, angry at their loss of audience, starting I guess somewhere around 2010.

josephcsible 5y ago
The equivalent of "forum moderation" is removal of content by Facebook group owners, or subreddit moderators. Censorship at the scale Big Tech does today would be equivalent to the vBulletin developers baking admin backdoors into the software so that they could censor other people's instances of it.
- krapp 5y ago
  > Censorship at the scale Big Tech does today would be equivalent to the vBulletin developers baking admin backdoors into the software so that they could censor other people's instances of it. No it wouldn't. As big as Facebook is, they still only moderate their own platform, and there is only one instance of Facebook. Separate vBulletin instances do not constitute a single, collective "vBulletin platform." The narrative of "Big Tech" as an organized leftist conspiracy orchestrating censorship over all social media is simply right-wing propaganda.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    > there is only one instance of Facebook. That's my point. The reason vBulletin forum moderators aren't equivalent to Big Tech censorship is that you can run your own vBulletin, independent of theirs. Censorship of Facebook is bad because that isn't an option.
    - heyitsguay 5y ago
      It absolutely is an option! There are open source social media projects out there that you can fork and start hosting today, if you want. Or you can use one of the existing alternatives. It's just that not many people use them right now, because Big Tech "censorship" has done a pretty good (definitely not perfect) job of just targeting bad actors. If a large non-toxic chunk of the population starts getting banned, non-toxic alternative platforms will become viable for the network effects that power social media centralization. Until then, the alternatives will look like Voat and Gab, and it seems like the online public doesn't love platforms that are dominated by the toxic castoffs from more mainstream platforms.
      - krapp 5y ago
        >If a large non-toxic chunk of the population starts getting banned, non-toxic alternative platforms will become viable for the network effects that power social media centralization. Case in point: a number of Youtubers fed up with the platform demonetizing and delisting their content are advertising their content on other video platforms, or just hosting their own like Corridor Digital. The web is one of the few examples of the free market actually working, but people have fallen for the defeatist and nihilistic narrative about the "centralization" of the web and "control" by sinister forces, insisting that competition with any big platform is simply impossible. They said that about MySpace too and look what happened.
Karrot_Kream 5y ago
That's because forums generally have topics and rules. If we're in a forum about sports cars and you're constantly starting adversarial threads about city planning and parking, then mods would probably censor you to keep the forum on topic. Places like Facebook advertise themselves as the "town square of the web". Traditionally nobody was censored in the town square. There's a difference between purpose built communities and the general network of communication. The term moderation itself often came from debate and discussion venues where moderators would police speeches.
- heyitsguay 5y ago
  > Traditionally nobody was censored in the town square. This isn't true, it's just that the spatial constraints IRL mean there's never been a need to scale moderation of town squares beyond intuitive methods. Go to your physical town square and start screaming slurs and threats of violence at passers-by, and see how long it takes before the community "censors" you.
  - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    > screaming slurs and threats of violence at passers-by, and see how long it takes before the community "censors" you. In developing and developed countries I've had (ostensibly) mentally ill people shouting epithets at passerbys and they're just ignored. So I think this is more about cultural norms. Moreover, the case you mention is simple. If a spammer joins a forum and starts spamming, there's usually broad support to kick them out. Once the argument becomes ideological, that's when sentiment is a lot more mixed

josephcsible 5y ago

The equivalent of "forum moderation" is removal of content by Facebook group owners, or subreddit moderators. Censorship at the scale Big Tech does today would be equivalent to the vBulletin developers baking admin backdoors into the software so that they could censor other people's instances of it.

krapp 5y ago
> Censorship at the scale Big Tech does today would be equivalent to the vBulletin developers baking admin backdoors into the software so that they could censor other people's instances of it. No it wouldn't. As big as Facebook is, they still only moderate their own platform, and there is only one instance of Facebook. Separate vBulletin instances do not constitute a single, collective "vBulletin platform." The narrative of "Big Tech" as an organized leftist conspiracy orchestrating censorship over all social media is simply right-wing propaganda.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  > there is only one instance of Facebook. That's my point. The reason vBulletin forum moderators aren't equivalent to Big Tech censorship is that you can run your own vBulletin, independent of theirs. Censorship of Facebook is bad because that isn't an option.
  - heyitsguay 5y ago
    It absolutely is an option! There are open source social media projects out there that you can fork and start hosting today, if you want. Or you can use one of the existing alternatives. It's just that not many people use them right now, because Big Tech "censorship" has done a pretty good (definitely not perfect) job of just targeting bad actors. If a large non-toxic chunk of the population starts getting banned, non-toxic alternative platforms will become viable for the network effects that power social media centralization. Until then, the alternatives will look like Voat and Gab, and it seems like the online public doesn't love platforms that are dominated by the toxic castoffs from more mainstream platforms.
    - krapp 5y ago
      >If a large non-toxic chunk of the population starts getting banned, non-toxic alternative platforms will become viable for the network effects that power social media centralization. Case in point: a number of Youtubers fed up with the platform demonetizing and delisting their content are advertising their content on other video platforms, or just hosting their own like Corridor Digital. The web is one of the few examples of the free market actually working, but people have fallen for the defeatist and nihilistic narrative about the "centralization" of the web and "control" by sinister forces, insisting that competition with any big platform is simply impossible. They said that about MySpace too and look what happened.

Karrot_Kream 5y ago

That's because forums generally have topics and rules. If we're in a forum about sports cars and you're constantly starting adversarial threads about city planning and parking, then mods would probably censor you to keep the forum on topic. Places like Facebook advertise themselves as the "town square of the web". Traditionally nobody was censored in the town square. There's a difference between purpose built communities and the general network of communication. The term moderation itself often came from debate and discussion venues where moderators would police speeches.

heyitsguay 5y ago
> Traditionally nobody was censored in the town square. This isn't true, it's just that the spatial constraints IRL mean there's never been a need to scale moderation of town squares beyond intuitive methods. Go to your physical town square and start screaming slurs and threats of violence at passers-by, and see how long it takes before the community "censors" you.
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  > screaming slurs and threats of violence at passers-by, and see how long it takes before the community "censors" you. In developing and developed countries I've had (ostensibly) mentally ill people shouting epithets at passerbys and they're just ignored. So I think this is more about cultural norms. Moreover, the case you mention is simple. If a spammer joins a forum and starts spamming, there's usually broad support to kick them out. Once the argument becomes ideological, that's when sentiment is a lot more mixed