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Social media is the KING KONG of censorship. Downvotes that hide your reply. Post removal. Automated post removal. Secret forbidden word lists. Banning. Shadow

Social media is the KING KONG of censorship. Downvotes that hide your reply. Post removal. Automated post removal. Secret forbidden word lists. Banning. Shadowbanning. Blocking. We have so much censorship now that we need to create a new language to talk about it. Forget piles of burning books. The library is on fire.

monkeybutton 5y ago
Social media websites are NOT obligated nor are compelled to carry/broadcast each and every person's opinion, how shitty it may be. That is is their choice and their freedom.
- forgotmypw17 5y ago
  I don't think they're obligated to do anything, but people using them also do not expect or understand how it works. It is a whole new breed of concealed censorship which is not obvious or visible without research.
  - swayvil 5y ago
    There's an assumption of sincerity in a conversation. Censorship, banning, and the threat of all that, definitely steps on sincerity like a 5000 pound gorilla foot. ESPECIALLY the sneaky invisible kind. It turns a nice conversation into mass psychosis. Are we seeing a lot of that these days. Maybe.
    - forgotmypw17 5y ago
      Yes, I've seen this first-hand on reddit as a minority-opinion mod of a large sub-reddit. One side of an argument was removed consistently, often without public notice, and the other side was allowed. You can probably guess it was about.
      - XorNot 5y ago
        This is so many possible subreddits as to be meaningless, though it seems telling that you don't want to use the name.
- swayvil 5y ago
  Did anybody say anything about obligation? Did anybody make any moral arguments? Not me. We're just talking about conversations here.
- chrischen 5y ago
  That’s like saying the Chinese communist party is free to censor, if you don’t like it just overthrow them. There’s a difference between being forced to promote something and being compelled to not censor.
- daenz 5y ago
  Just because someone isn't forced by law to do something, doesn't mean they are values we should be promoting. There is a whole range of "they're not obligated to X" scenarios that we can mention. For example, police aren't legally required to protect your life, even if they have ample opportunity to do so. But clearly we shouldn't promote that behavior.
- throwaway0x7E6 5y ago
  yes, they are NOT obligated to do it, so they suffer NO consequences for NOT doing it. in turn, we are NOT obligated to accept that as good or normal.
paxys 5y ago
Ask people if they want tech companies to censor information or show everything exactly as it was posted, and most will pick the latter option, because of course it is the "correct" one. Then combine their email inbox and spam folder for a day, and there will be riots. "But that's not what I meant!" Well, algorithmically sorting through your incoming mail and hiding a bunch of it from view based on opaque criteria decided by a large tech corporation is the very definition of censorship. And yet we are okay with it since it makes our personal experience better. People who cry about big tech censorship are perfectly fine with a curated experience with 99% of the garbage removed. By debating endlessly about the remaining 1% you aren't making some great moral point.
- swayvil 5y ago
  That's what's called "argument by taking the absurd extreme". Of course there will be a degree of necessary censorship. For example, yes, it is practical to censor the spambots.
  - paxys 5y ago
    And I assume you are the one who gets to decide what is "necessary" and "unnecessary" censorship?
    - car_analogy 5y ago
      Clearly there is no distinction to be made, and a spam filter is the same as burning all copies of 1984?
      - paxys 5y ago
        The slippery slope argument applies to both sides of this debate. A tech company removing a random Tweet from its platform isn't the same as a spam filter, just as it isn't the same as a Nazi book burning.
        car_analogy 5y ago
Nursie 5y ago
You are not being censored by society, you are being chucked off someone's platform. You are perfectly free to put up your own website, to disseminate flyers, and to stand in public and yell. You are not entitled to use other people's platforms. Sorry. If you feel that they are so central that it's effectively silencing you, it may be that you should put down social media and step outside for a bit. It's not the world. It's not all that important.
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  > perfectly free to put up your own website To an extent. You can't host it on AWS, and Cloudflare might refuse to route traffic to it. Expect that to get worse.
  - throwaway684936 5y ago
    You can host your own physical server. There are thousands of independent hosting options across different countries to choose from. You aren't forced to use AWS or Cloudflare. There are always other options. The internet itself is the public square. Not the individual websites.
Theory5 5y ago
There's a difference between content moderation and censorship. Not to mention shaping user experience. For example, If a site has a mechanism where after X number of downvotes by users, your comment is hidden, that's not censorship. You've spoken your piece, and other users voted on if they liked your comment or not, or if it contributed to the conversation or provided useful information, etc. Those other things you mentioned, you do so without context. No social media site can function and be a useful and valuable place to visit without some form of content moderation. The distinction lies in where the line is drawn. Can you (constructively) criticize the site mods or parent company? Speak your own views in a reasonable discussion that don't cross the line (calls for violence, unintelligible ranting, trolling)? There's a fine line for a lot of this.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  > There's a difference between content moderation and censorship. Not at all. Whenever some individuals posts ONE piece of content that's not acceptable for some obscure non-written reason, the censorship hammer falls on the whole profile/account of said person, thereby removing all historical acceptable communication as well. If it was really different, you would ONLY censor the problematic piece of content, not everything back to the roots of history.
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  > There's a difference between content moderation and censorship There should be a difference, but in practice, content moderation tools are abused to enact agenda-driven censorship. Always.
beebmam 5y ago
You don't have a right to force ME to host your opinions. Just like you don't have a right to force Amazon to sell your products or to force a library to carry your book. You DO have a right, in the US, to be protected from a government limiting your speech through law. And it is our responsibility, as US citizens, to uphold that right.
- epgui 5y ago
  I find people often get confused about the actors and the forum, but indeed that’s a very relevant consideration: in the end, free speech is meant to help rebalance power asymmetry between individuals and state. Not to help malicious individuals destabilize entire societies.
conz 5y ago
> Social media is the KING KONG of censorship. Downvotes that hide your reply. Post removal. Automated post removal. Secret forbidden word lists. Banning. Shadowbanning. Blocking. We have so much censorship now that we need to create a new language to talk about it. Social media cannot censor you. Social media, or any content publishing platform, can only moderate content. Only a government - which has the power to legislate arrests or fines - has the power to censor you. Demanding that the content publisher publish the content you have submitted is akin to demanding the New York Times publish your letter to the editor. Both are unreasonable requests. Unless a content platform is an absolute natural monopoly, there should be no reason to legislate that it must publish all content submitted to it. Forcing a content publisher to publish all content is akin to forcing it to not publish content; both are a removal of freedom from the content publisher. If your posts submitted to a content publisher are removed, consider spinning up your own content publishing platform - many are available free online, or even pay for the printing of your views in pamphlets or books. If your government does not imprison you for your views, then you are not being censored.

monkeybutton 5y ago

Social media websites are NOT obligated nor are compelled to carry/broadcast each and every person's opinion, how shitty it may be. That is is their choice and their freedom.

forgotmypw17 5y ago
I don't think they're obligated to do anything, but people using them also do not expect or understand how it works. It is a whole new breed of concealed censorship which is not obvious or visible without research.
- swayvil 5y ago
  There's an assumption of sincerity in a conversation. Censorship, banning, and the threat of all that, definitely steps on sincerity like a 5000 pound gorilla foot. ESPECIALLY the sneaky invisible kind. It turns a nice conversation into mass psychosis. Are we seeing a lot of that these days. Maybe.
  - forgotmypw17 5y ago
    Yes, I've seen this first-hand on reddit as a minority-opinion mod of a large sub-reddit. One side of an argument was removed consistently, often without public notice, and the other side was allowed. You can probably guess it was about.
    - XorNot 5y ago
      This is so many possible subreddits as to be meaningless, though it seems telling that you don't want to use the name.
swayvil 5y ago
Did anybody say anything about obligation? Did anybody make any moral arguments? Not me. We're just talking about conversations here.
chrischen 5y ago
That’s like saying the Chinese communist party is free to censor, if you don’t like it just overthrow them. There’s a difference between being forced to promote something and being compelled to not censor.
daenz 5y ago
Just because someone isn't forced by law to do something, doesn't mean they are values we should be promoting. There is a whole range of "they're not obligated to X" scenarios that we can mention. For example, police aren't legally required to protect your life, even if they have ample opportunity to do so. But clearly we shouldn't promote that behavior.
throwaway0x7E6 5y ago
yes, they are NOT obligated to do it, so they suffer NO consequences for NOT doing it. in turn, we are NOT obligated to accept that as good or normal.

paxys 5y ago

Ask people if they want tech companies to censor information or show everything exactly as it was posted, and most will pick the latter option, because of course it is the "correct" one. Then combine their email inbox and spam folder for a day, and there will be riots. "But that's not what I meant!" Well, algorithmically sorting through your incoming mail and hiding a bunch of it from view based on opaque criteria decided by a large tech corporation is the very definition of censorship. And yet we are okay with it since it makes our personal experience better. People who cry about big tech censorship are perfectly fine with a curated experience with 99% of the garbage removed. By debating endlessly about the remaining 1% you aren't making some great moral point.

swayvil 5y ago
That's what's called "argument by taking the absurd extreme". Of course there will be a degree of necessary censorship. For example, yes, it is practical to censor the spambots.
- paxys 5y ago
  And I assume you are the one who gets to decide what is "necessary" and "unnecessary" censorship?
  - car_analogy 5y ago
    Clearly there is no distinction to be made, and a spam filter is the same as burning all copies of 1984?
    - paxys 5y ago
      The slippery slope argument applies to both sides of this debate. A tech company removing a random Tweet from its platform isn't the same as a spam filter, just as it isn't the same as a Nazi book burning.
      - car_analogy 5y ago

Nursie 5y ago

You are not being censored by society, you are being chucked off someone's platform. You are perfectly free to put up your own website, to disseminate flyers, and to stand in public and yell. You are not entitled to use other people's platforms. Sorry. If you feel that they are so central that it's effectively silencing you, it may be that you should put down social media and step outside for a bit. It's not the world. It's not all that important.

commandlinefan 5y ago
> perfectly free to put up your own website To an extent. You can't host it on AWS, and Cloudflare might refuse to route traffic to it. Expect that to get worse.
- throwaway684936 5y ago
  You can host your own physical server. There are thousands of independent hosting options across different countries to choose from. You aren't forced to use AWS or Cloudflare. There are always other options. The internet itself is the public square. Not the individual websites.

Theory5 5y ago

There's a difference between content moderation and censorship. Not to mention shaping user experience. For example, If a site has a mechanism where after X number of downvotes by users, your comment is hidden, that's not censorship. You've spoken your piece, and other users voted on if they liked your comment or not, or if it contributed to the conversation or provided useful information, etc. Those other things you mentioned, you do so without context. No social media site can function and be a useful and valuable place to visit without some form of content moderation. The distinction lies in where the line is drawn. Can you (constructively) criticize the site mods or parent company? Speak your own views in a reasonable discussion that don't cross the line (calls for violence, unintelligible ranting, trolling)? There's a fine line for a lot of this.

ekianjo 5y ago
> There's a difference between content moderation and censorship. Not at all. Whenever some individuals posts ONE piece of content that's not acceptable for some obscure non-written reason, the censorship hammer falls on the whole profile/account of said person, thereby removing all historical acceptable communication as well. If it was really different, you would ONLY censor the problematic piece of content, not everything back to the roots of history.
commandlinefan 5y ago
> There's a difference between content moderation and censorship There should be a difference, but in practice, content moderation tools are abused to enact agenda-driven censorship. Always.

beebmam 5y ago

You don't have a right to force ME to host your opinions. Just like you don't have a right to force Amazon to sell your products or to force a library to carry your book. You DO have a right, in the US, to be protected from a government limiting your speech through law. And it is our responsibility, as US citizens, to uphold that right.

epgui 5y ago
I find people often get confused about the actors and the forum, but indeed that’s a very relevant consideration: in the end, free speech is meant to help rebalance power asymmetry between individuals and state. Not to help malicious individuals destabilize entire societies.

conz 5y ago

> Social media is the KING KONG of censorship. Downvotes that hide your reply. Post removal. Automated post removal. Secret forbidden word lists. Banning. Shadowbanning. Blocking. We have so much censorship now that we need to create a new language to talk about it. Social media cannot censor you. Social media, or any content publishing platform, can only moderate content. Only a government - which has the power to legislate arrests or fines - has the power to censor you. Demanding that the content publisher publish the content you have submitted is akin to demanding the New York Times publish your letter to the editor. Both are unreasonable requests. Unless a content platform is an absolute natural monopoly, there should be no reason to legislate that it must publish all content submitted to it. Forcing a content publisher to publish all content is akin to forcing it to not publish content; both are a removal of freedom from the content publisher. If your posts submitted to a content publisher are removed, consider spinning up your own content publishing platform - many are available free online, or even pay for the printing of your views in pamphlets or books. If your government does not imprison you for your views, then you are not being censored.