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That's insane. I started Ask Me Anything on reddit, does being a moderator in that capacity mean I limited free speech of Americans?

by fudged71 10mo ago

cosmicgadget 10mo ago
Did you remove questions that were not about Rampart?
intended 10mo ago
As nutty as it may seem - All moderation is part of the “censorship industrial complex”. Frankly this was inevitable. There is a reckoning that has been put off, within the groups that champion free speech. Mods happen to be the people who see how the sausage is made, but have no real ability to be heard. The Zeitgeist is still happy to say “censorship bad”, thus moderation bad. The work of ensuring “healthy” communities or debate is left to the magic of the “market place of ideas”. Except the market place is well and truly broken, captured and unfair for regular users. We have a dark forest for content consumers. This conversation needs to be had. Edit: tried to make the tone less frustrated.
- onjectic 10mo ago
  We need to have a serious conversation about the pros and cons of anonymity on public online forums. It’s objectively an unnatural form of communication, most of us see the harm, but we also don’t want to swing towards mass surveillance(which is a very real risk). EDIT: By unnatural I am referring to not knowing who you are talking to, not knowing the slightest thing about them, our brains don’t process this aspect for what it is, instead we fill in this identity with our imaginations. Perhaps there was a better word for this than unnatural, but to me its especially unnatural because it doesn’t really occur in nature(at least not easily), where as communication across long distances or time happens all the time in nature. TLDR: It’s unnatural that we no longer even know if a comment was written by a human. EDIT2: I am not strongly in favor of removing anonymity from the internet. I don’t know what the answer is.
  - seanp2k2 10mo ago
    The dystopian surveillance state is already here: https://youtu.be/Pp9MwZkHiMQ https://youtu.be/Pp9MwZkHiMQ
  - pjc50 10mo ago
    Plenty of people are happy to publish calls for war crimes in the newspapers under their own name, or on the Secretary for Defence letterhead.
    - onjectic 10mo ago
      I’m not sure how this counter argues my observation. You seem to be implying that the end goal would be to stop people from saying certain things you find abhorrent. Humans won’t ever stop doing that, it’s that it would sometimes be nice to know that the person presenting themselves as a disillusioned American voter is actually on the opposite side of the planet.
  - logicchains 10mo ago
    > It’s objectively an unnatural form of communication Communication with people half the way across the globe at the speed of light is objectively unnatural too, should we ban that? There's no "we" calling for the end of online anonymity excepts for spooks and people who believe people should be identified and punished for expressing opinions they disagree with.
    - deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
  - krapp 10mo ago
    Any form of communication other than grunting and howling from trees is "objectively an unnatural form of communication." Attaching your real world identity to every interaction you have on the internet is no more objectively natural than doing otherwise, and more of a burden than we place on interactions in the real world. I don't exchange my drivers license and SSL with everyone I talk to. We don't need to have the serious conversation, we've had it, and the false dichotomy you're presenting here is invalid. We don't have to choose one or the other. Anonymity has been well established in every free society as legally and morally defensible and a necessity for free speech and a free state for decades, to the point of including some degree of anonymity from one's own government. Moderation beyond strictly legal content is acceptable. Anonymity is also acceptable. 4chan can be 4chan, and other places can not be 4chan. Free speech does not guarantee you a platform, much less all platforms. It doesn't require me to put a target on my back, either.
nutjob2 10mo ago
You'll find out once the government's masked goons drag you off.

That's insane. I started Ask Me Anything on reddit, does being a moderator in that capacity mean I limited free speech of Americans?

cosmicgadget 10mo ago

Did you remove questions that were not about Rampart?

intended 10mo ago

As nutty as it may seem - All moderation is part of the “censorship industrial complex”. Frankly this was inevitable. There is a reckoning that has been put off, within the groups that champion free speech. Mods happen to be the people who see how the sausage is made, but have no real ability to be heard. The Zeitgeist is still happy to say “censorship bad”, thus moderation bad. The work of ensuring “healthy” communities or debate is left to the magic of the “market place of ideas”. Except the market place is well and truly broken, captured and unfair for regular users. We have a dark forest for content consumers. This conversation needs to be had. Edit: tried to make the tone less frustrated.

onjectic 10mo ago
We need to have a serious conversation about the pros and cons of anonymity on public online forums. It’s objectively an unnatural form of communication, most of us see the harm, but we also don’t want to swing towards mass surveillance(which is a very real risk). EDIT: By unnatural I am referring to not knowing who you are talking to, not knowing the slightest thing about them, our brains don’t process this aspect for what it is, instead we fill in this identity with our imaginations. Perhaps there was a better word for this than unnatural, but to me its especially unnatural because it doesn’t really occur in nature(at least not easily), where as communication across long distances or time happens all the time in nature. TLDR: It’s unnatural that we no longer even know if a comment was written by a human. EDIT2: I am not strongly in favor of removing anonymity from the internet. I don’t know what the answer is.
- seanp2k2 10mo ago
  The dystopian surveillance state is already here: https://youtu.be/Pp9MwZkHiMQ https://youtu.be/Pp9MwZkHiMQ
- pjc50 10mo ago
  Plenty of people are happy to publish calls for war crimes in the newspapers under their own name, or on the Secretary for Defence letterhead.
  - onjectic 10mo ago
    I’m not sure how this counter argues my observation. You seem to be implying that the end goal would be to stop people from saying certain things you find abhorrent. Humans won’t ever stop doing that, it’s that it would sometimes be nice to know that the person presenting themselves as a disillusioned American voter is actually on the opposite side of the planet.
- logicchains 10mo ago
  > It’s objectively an unnatural form of communication Communication with people half the way across the globe at the speed of light is objectively unnatural too, should we ban that? There's no "we" calling for the end of online anonymity excepts for spooks and people who believe people should be identified and punished for expressing opinions they disagree with.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
- krapp 10mo ago
  Any form of communication other than grunting and howling from trees is "objectively an unnatural form of communication." Attaching your real world identity to every interaction you have on the internet is no more objectively natural than doing otherwise, and more of a burden than we place on interactions in the real world. I don't exchange my drivers license and SSL with everyone I talk to. We don't need to have the serious conversation, we've had it, and the false dichotomy you're presenting here is invalid. We don't have to choose one or the other. Anonymity has been well established in every free society as legally and morally defensible and a necessity for free speech and a free state for decades, to the point of including some degree of anonymity from one's own government. Moderation beyond strictly legal content is acceptable. Anonymity is also acceptable. 4chan can be 4chan, and other places can not be 4chan. Free speech does not guarantee you a platform, much less all platforms. It doesn't require me to put a target on my back, either.

nutjob2 10mo ago

You'll find out once the government's masked goons drag you off.