Your Speech, Their Rules: People Who Guard the Internet

I found this article to be surprisingly nuanced, at least compared to the pre-conceived notions I expected. In general, I veer more towards the "free speech" end of the spectrum, and this article helped to paint a picture of what it's actually like on the ground.

With that being said, I think there is still a bit of naïveté in terms of their self-perception, but that's to be expected with practically anyone in any job. At a high level, these teams seem to serve as a sort of "immune system" for the platform, protecting against the indirect, implied threat of high-handed governmental regulation.

It seems like they're trying to thread the needle between "We're just a platform, anyone can say anything." and "Users of our site can only say things that the company itself would say." That process will naturally be guided not only by concrete policies, but shifting social norms, the teams' evolving experience and composition, the individual members' prejudices and biases, and so on.

Therefore, it's not surprising that this might produce "false positives" when the viewpoint spectrum of these teams doesn't align with the spectrums of certain subgroups of their users. The best they can really do (without abdicating responsibility and letting it percolate up to a higher level, like gov't) is try to ensure their filter spectrum is as closely aligned to their (desired?) userbase's as possible.

In general, an interesting article, and worth the read.

I'm annoyed this was posted while I'm away from my home computer because I actually have pastebin dumps of the internal communications between 4chan moderators leaked during the 2014 chaos that could provide an interesting contrast between the moderation strategies of the public squares of the internet and the sewage systems of the internet.

Edit: I'm going to see if I can find the original pastebins on fireden and post them before my edit window closes

There are a few basic problems for me. One is that these platforms are so all-encompassing and monopolistic that they have essentially become large public spaces. Yet they are censored by private for profit companies behind closed doors.

The biggest issue for me is the political censorship. Political censorship is harmful because it restricts political dissent.

And of course the people censoring political content don't think that they are stifling political dissent. What happens is they see something that completely contradicts their worldview and label it as "crazy".

The problem is that many people have been given a worldview in which any truly unpalatable recent actions by their government are simply impossible. Or more generally, narratives which contradict official propaganda are identified by that worldview as "crazy". In other words, the censors, like most people in society, have been trained not to overstep the thought-authority of the government.

The reason this is an issue is because propaganda that serves a political regime can compromise the overall internal security of a country and even negatively impact global security. This is security as in life-or-death.

I don't really think this article is going to change the minds of anyone who thinks they're just applying arbitrary cultural standard to paper over what the hegemony finds icky. 'cause they are, and they admit as much.

Am I supposed to feel different about censorship by empathizing with a censor? I don't like the TSA but I understand the guy patting me down at the airport is just an agent of a system outside his control.

Also the dude that said it's not like being the censors form 1984 is being lied to, by himself.

Yeah there's so much nuance involved in figuring out whether a handful of giant corporations should be permitted to summarily remove a streamer from all social media because they dislike his political position. I like the part where the one giant walking hotpocket described how he's saving lives by discretionarily removing interpretable expression from public view.

Seriously, what a joke. This is how the internet turns into another extension of the ridiculous, culturally oppressive "entertainment" industry we were all trying to get away from. The fact these people want these jobs should disqualify them from having the jobs.