We aren’t even having a candid, good faith public conversation about all this.
Nothing in content moderation would necessitate banning public figures with heterodox views from your platform. Hell, that’s not even a requirement for censorship.
Banning is for trolls and bots and bad faith actors, which is definitionally never someone with >1million followers.
That choice is about publicly punishing someone and most importantly, distancing yourself personally from that person and whatever they said so you don’t get confronted at a cocktail party.
So yea, when you open up a site to all legal content, you immediately are flooded with people at the very edge or just over every law.
Similarly, when you ban Alex Jones, you pretty soon end up banning everyone who you disagree with.
Most of what is going on right now in social media isn’t moderation or censorship. It’s just being lame and awful and lacking principles and self awareness.
I'm not saying that every time I hear about someone being banned its for these reasons but its often enough that I become suspicious it may be someone trying to argue for "The Bell Curve" or that slaves were happy or some other ridiculous racist idea.
Tons of people with >1Million views are trolls and extremely bad faith actors. That's often how they became so popular. Look at Tucker Carlson. If you don't ban them you may be encouraging others to act in bad faith to gain popularity.
If you don't ban Alex Jones you are letting him spread his conspiratorial racist views and harassment campaigns on your platform.
We aren’t even having a candid, good faith public conversation about all this.
Nothing in content moderation would necessitate banning public figures with heterodox views from your platform. Hell, that’s not even a requirement for censorship.
Banning is for trolls and bots and bad faith actors, which is definitionally never someone with >1million followers.
That choice is about publicly punishing someone and most importantly, distancing yourself personally from that person and whatever they said so you don’t get confronted at a cocktail party.
So yea, when you open up a site to all legal content, you immediately are flooded with people at the very edge or just over every law.
Similarly, when you ban Alex Jones, you pretty soon end up banning everyone who you disagree with.
Most of what is going on right now in social media isn’t moderation or censorship. It’s just being lame and awful and lacking principles and self awareness.