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> From what I've noticed, free speech advocacy isn't really about "allowing everything" but more about not applying more censorship than what is necessary and n

> From what I've noticed, free speech advocacy isn't really about "allowing everything" but more about not applying more censorship than what is necessary and not doing it arbitrarily. That's a nice phrasing but it doesn't hold up to what I've seen at all. Everyone has a different definition of what is "necessary" and anyone that gets (shadow-)banned is going to scream "Censorship!". I've moderated communities and watched this happen enough times to know. There simply is no objective way to handle it, it's always going to subjective and there will always be false positives. The alternative is a hellscape. HN has rules it adheres to but if someone finds a loophole or continues to walk "right up to the line" they probably aren't going to be around for long. I tried moderating a community once completely to the "letter of the law" and it turned out horribly. People abused that and drove off people who were kind and had interesting things to contribute. What was left was a few people who stuck it out and a bunch of trolls who knew they could get away with it.

g42gregory 3y ago
I think the alternative is not a hellscape. The alternative is a clear, specific, transparent, rule-based moderation. In particular, I think that it's best to control the "temperature" of the discussion (even if subjectively), but keep the topics of the discussion completely open. Why would people not be allowed to discuss certain things, if these things gain enough traction? Instead, you could just control the temperature: banning the usage of bad words, personal attacks, etc...
- pixl97 3y ago
  The first rule of creating any system is remember that 'everyone' is smarter than you. The problem with rule based moderation quickly boils down to the Sortie's Paradox. Everyone that is smarter than you will quickly find logical contradictions in your system based on the uncertainty of language and your system collapses in the meta argument. When defining a rule based system, remember the problem space is enormous, potentially even unbounded. As your number of rules grow the number of conflicting rules will increase. Then there are some things like politics that low temperature conversations are near impossible in already...
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    Everyone, combined, is smarter then Godel but no one has disproved his theory yet after close to a hundred years. Why is it automatically impossible for a set of moderation rules to be as rigorous and logically correct?
    - pixl97 3y ago
      Language is not rigorous and logically correct. Unless you're planning to demand your users only use one particular language only a well defined subset of it. Using a theory as a comparison is generally a pretty poor example as we have no universal theory that defines everything, instead they are targeted at only a small slice of 'something'. Language has a larger scope than that.
      - MichaelZuo 3y ago
        > Language is not rigorous and logically correct. Unless you're planning to demand your users only use one particular language only a well defined subset of it. Can you demonstrate why this is the case?
        pixl97 3y ago
        Good = Good Bad = Bad Bad = Good There you go, language is logically inconsistent.
  - joshstrange 3y ago
    I completely agree and that's what I was trying to say with the "right up to the line" part but you explained it more succinctly and clearly, thank you. In addition, not every discussion/content belongs everywhere. I've seen "well if people upvote it then they like it and it should stay" argument made before and I've also seen it fail. Memes, jokes, or the more extreme example, porn, might get upvotes but that doesn't mean it belongs in a certain community. That's not to say any of those things are bad or don't have a place but not every place needs to cater to or allow them. Some people want spaces to hang out that don't discuss politics and/or want to stay laser-focused on a certain topic and that's ok but some people see that and scream "censorship!". What it really comes down to is that person wants to say whatever _they_ want to say, but they certainly don't want a real "free speech zone" because that would drive them away too in the end. No, they want an exception to the rule for themselves and when they don't get it they cry foul.
_Algernon_ 3y ago
The objective way of doing it is free speech is only if government[1]. Anything else goes. I do think that companies which are essentially infrastructure/utilitity providers (cloudflare, aws, etc.) should also be considered government in this case. [1]: https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  an ISP is a utility. they're just, like, the phone company, man. i don't need them telling me what i can see, or say, and to them its all mostly the same anyway. HN is not, and they can certainly ban what they want.
- Pannoniae 3y ago
  I kind of agree, but at the same time, this line of thinking falls a bit flat IMO. There used to be certain social norms in the past, which are debatable to be helpful or not, but which used to define what is acceptable behaviour and what is not. Today, those norms are disappearing/being deconstructed (which is generally a good thing), but there is no replacement! In theory it is fine that everyone has the rights to express everything / boycott anything / not associate with anyone, but on a societal level, this doesn't work very well if not kept within bounds. This is noticeable in the level of polarisation - there are no norms to be respectful or try to listen to the other person - so people don't. Same with the right of association - it's fine that the law is that you can disassociate with/discriminate against anyone who doesn't belong to a specific protected group, but this means that if a significant part of powerful entities collude to suppress something, then that thing will be suppressed without any legal or social remedy. This has a destabilising effect on society as people are more and more drawn into their 'camp' where they preach to the choir and actively root out-group or non-conformist behaviour out. I think this kind of reads like a rant, so I apologise for the wording and the formatting. My thoughts are not entirely clear and structured on the topic so I can't do any better right now.

g42gregory 3y ago

I think the alternative is not a hellscape. The alternative is a clear, specific, transparent, rule-based moderation. In particular, I think that it's best to control the "temperature" of the discussion (even if subjectively), but keep the topics of the discussion completely open. Why would people not be allowed to discuss certain things, if these things gain enough traction? Instead, you could just control the temperature: banning the usage of bad words, personal attacks, etc...

pixl97 3y ago
The first rule of creating any system is remember that 'everyone' is smarter than you. The problem with rule based moderation quickly boils down to the Sortie's Paradox. Everyone that is smarter than you will quickly find logical contradictions in your system based on the uncertainty of language and your system collapses in the meta argument. When defining a rule based system, remember the problem space is enormous, potentially even unbounded. As your number of rules grow the number of conflicting rules will increase. Then there are some things like politics that low temperature conversations are near impossible in already...
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  Everyone, combined, is smarter then Godel but no one has disproved his theory yet after close to a hundred years. Why is it automatically impossible for a set of moderation rules to be as rigorous and logically correct?
  - pixl97 3y ago
    Language is not rigorous and logically correct. Unless you're planning to demand your users only use one particular language only a well defined subset of it. Using a theory as a comparison is generally a pretty poor example as we have no universal theory that defines everything, instead they are targeted at only a small slice of 'something'. Language has a larger scope than that.
    - MichaelZuo 3y ago
      > Language is not rigorous and logically correct. Unless you're planning to demand your users only use one particular language only a well defined subset of it. Can you demonstrate why this is the case?
      - pixl97 3y ago
        Good = Good Bad = Bad Bad = Good There you go, language is logically inconsistent.
- joshstrange 3y ago
  I completely agree and that's what I was trying to say with the "right up to the line" part but you explained it more succinctly and clearly, thank you. In addition, not every discussion/content belongs everywhere. I've seen "well if people upvote it then they like it and it should stay" argument made before and I've also seen it fail. Memes, jokes, or the more extreme example, porn, might get upvotes but that doesn't mean it belongs in a certain community. That's not to say any of those things are bad or don't have a place but not every place needs to cater to or allow them. Some people want spaces to hang out that don't discuss politics and/or want to stay laser-focused on a certain topic and that's ok but some people see that and scream "censorship!". What it really comes down to is that person wants to say whatever _they_ want to say, but they certainly don't want a real "free speech zone" because that would drive them away too in the end. No, they want an exception to the rule for themselves and when they don't get it they cry foul.

_Algernon_ 3y ago

The objective way of doing it is free speech is only if government[1]. Anything else goes. I do think that companies which are essentially infrastructure/utilitity providers (cloudflare, aws, etc.) should also be considered government in this case. [1]: https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/

red-iron-pine 3y ago
an ISP is a utility. they're just, like, the phone company, man. i don't need them telling me what i can see, or say, and to them its all mostly the same anyway. HN is not, and they can certainly ban what they want.
Pannoniae 3y ago
I kind of agree, but at the same time, this line of thinking falls a bit flat IMO. There used to be certain social norms in the past, which are debatable to be helpful or not, but which used to define what is acceptable behaviour and what is not. Today, those norms are disappearing/being deconstructed (which is generally a good thing), but there is no replacement! In theory it is fine that everyone has the rights to express everything / boycott anything / not associate with anyone, but on a societal level, this doesn't work very well if not kept within bounds. This is noticeable in the level of polarisation - there are no norms to be respectful or try to listen to the other person - so people don't. Same with the right of association - it's fine that the law is that you can disassociate with/discriminate against anyone who doesn't belong to a specific protected group, but this means that if a significant part of powerful entities collude to suppress something, then that thing will be suppressed without any legal or social remedy. This has a destabilising effect on society as people are more and more drawn into their 'camp' where they preach to the choir and actively root out-group or non-conformist behaviour out. I think this kind of reads like a rant, so I apologise for the wording and the formatting. My thoughts are not entirely clear and structured on the topic so I can't do any better right now.