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Absolute free speech platforms don't work for the majority of people because they have no way of constraining participants to the Overton Window. It may be har
by errantmind 4y ago
Absolute free speech platforms don't work for the majority of people because they have no way of constraining participants to the Overton Window.
It may be hard to understand for some, but there are topics that make people highly uncomfortable. These people prefer an environment that 'protects' them from fringe ideas.
The issue is, the 'Overton Enforcement' doesn't work when a large minority (say, 30% of users) has ideas considered highly controversial to the majority of users. Most people actually do want to live in a bubble most of the time so being exposed to these opinions undermines their sanity.
A 100% free speech platform could work fairly well though if it was sophisticated enough to understand what a user does and doesn't want to see and then only occasionally expose them to controversial content. Kind of like TikTok's 'for you' page but with less censorship. Or, perhaps, let users control their exposure directly. Twitter doesn't have the technical capability to pull this off though so they are stuck with occasionally infuriating large minorities of users.
- bheadmaster 4y agoIt seems that the main problem is trying to force everyone into the same enironment and searching for a one-size-fits-all solution, leading to censorship of almost any topic for which there is a vocal enough group that wants it censored. A simple solution would be federation - let people build and choose their own bubbles instead of forcing everyone into a one giant bubble. That's how it works in real-life.
- cwkoss 4y agoThe social graph itself should perform moderation rather than having a single all-powerful centralized censor.