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And on a related note, the ability to browse forums with vastly different themes, cultures, and tolerance has always been there. The big networks solve a discoverability problem for end users (and get accused of being the problem when they [don't] stop certain things being discoverable). Moderation complaints have revolved around the platform companies promoting or refusing to promote stuff to their widest possible audience even though other websites exist, and I don't see how the biggest 'filter' providers don't run into the same issue (with the existence of niche and manually customisable 'filters' failing to be a 'solution' in the same sense many people are unhappy with being able to reach Gab followers but not Twitter ones)

> To have a good discourse

...is not the primary purpose of Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Which may be a better way of stating the root problem than focusing on either protocols or platforms.

The crowdsourcing of moderation via the downvoting mechanism has a pitfall however that I won't get into here except to say there are mobs of irrational, bias, and laziness that get their fix of dopamine by clicking a downvote arrow rather than having the cost of time/effort to add something qualitative to discussion.

> it is precisely the "unfree" parts of HN that make it attractive ... stuff like a culture of down-voting destructive, inflammatory or snarky comments ... a strong focus on certain topics etc.

Cultures of upvoting/downvoting are completely orthogonal to whether protocols or applications are free software or proprietary. Neither does the subject matter focus on a news aggregation site.

> What if the free platform you are hosting is used by a ring of child molestors and pedophiles?

Guess what? The telephone network is used by "rings of child molesters and pedophiles". And strangely enough, nobody expects the phone companies to "deal with this". Same goes for a decentralized instant messaging and chat platform.

Also, the government and corporate opponents of privacy routinely inflate the prevalence of rings of supposed terrorists, pedophiles etc., because bringing them up instills excessive fear and clouds our judgement. You write that you're "aware" of this, but apparently you're fine with it, as you're making that the center of your argument.

> Do you accept that freedom for all also means freedom for them?

Your question is phrased ambiguously, to manipulate us into believing that a free decentralized communications platform means that we agree that people are "free" to molest children, whatever that means.

Well, you should be free to pick up the phone and call whichever number you like, without having to first prove you're not a child molester. And the same goes for putting up some flyer on a neighborhood notice board. And for putting up a website.

> One where the discussions enrich... or rather the lawless zone...

If-by-whiskey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey

Let me rephrase your argument, so its tractable.

The risks are overblown, and so its ok to create places with decentralized freer speech.

Firstly- I removed the parts where you stated that this is like the phone network.

Phone calls are temporally limited, once you are done with a call its over. You can't hear that voice again, or relive that conversation, except through memory.

Text on a forum combines the worst of phone calls and books.

Not only is it easy to create and respond in real time (Like a phone, and unlike books or letters), but it is also persistent so people can read and participate in that moment of emotion repeatedly (like a phone call).

These are great and greatly bad depending on how they are used, but they are dramatically different from the way a phone call impacts human beings.

Which brings us to the second point - it isn't only the information, it is the emotion, or in combination the "content" of speech on forums/social media that matters.

Having actively tried to push for free speech and then managed speech, I can guarantee that without moderation, forums/social spaces collapse. They fall victim to our neurology, and the scale of people on it.

So you can't avoid the use of force here, the question is the amount of force being used, and whether it is commensurate to the specific event it is being used to mitigate.

Fair point regarding the difference between phone conversations and textual forum/group discussions.

However - I disagree with your bottom line. Perhaps on the level of the _individual_ forum/channel/board you may be right. But not on the level of the _platform_. Specific forums/spaces/channels etc. which collapse - collapse, that's a problem for their founders and members.

In that respect, I'll make a different analogy: Mailing lists and newsgroups. Also not a perfect analogy, but - a mailing list or NNTP server does not have to police anything, but individual lists often need to set up some sort of moderation to avoid collapse into flame-wars etc.

So you can't avoid the use of force here, the question is the amount of force being used, and whether it is commensurate to the specific event it is being used to mitigate.

The last line of my comment was a quote, after which I intended to comment:

The mailing list might not be able to avoid the use of force (maybe). But the platform can avoid it.

The telephone analogy is a good case against your position.

The modern equivalent of the telephone network is the internet, specifically the cables, routers and switches that allow us to communicate.

The owners of said equipment are not liable if child pornography is send through their wires.

That is not a problem, we don’t close roads because child pornographers use them.

But the end point is a totally different matter.

But to the point: moderating the (tone of) the discussion, is essential for a good discussion. You can’t have the trolls interfering.

I think moderation and thus limiting free speech somewhat is actual fundamental essential for a good debate or discussion.

Yet it did work quite well in the older net. Wasn't perfect, but it was working for many. Was it just the entry barrier and limited demographics? I don't know.

I think strongly moderated places always develop some form of echo chamber, even the interesting ones. So I don't believe in the dichotomy of lawless zones and unique perspectives. On the contrary, I think strongly moderated communities will more likely develop orthodoxies.

Easy answers are often popular, but that phenomenon is true in almost all communities.

> Was it just the entry barrier and limited demographics?

Also possibly the difference in sheer volume of content and people. It's much easier to moderate when you have at most a few dozen people discussing a given topic. HN is dealing with thousands of people who sometimes, during really heated discussions like the GameStop ones, post literally at the same time and make more content than a single moderator or even a team of moderators is capable of reviewing, even with community help in form of reports or flags.

> I think what many don't realise is that it is precisely the "unfree" parts of HN that make it attractive. And by that I don't mean centralized technical or organizational structure, but rather stuff like a culture of downvoting destructive, inflamatory or snarky comments, a good and mostly invisible moderation, a strong focus on certain topics etc.

I'm over it. I see many comments that politely present the opposing view get downvoted to oblivion. It isn't just the "inflamatory or snarky" comment. Dissenting opinion is censored on this platform.

I made the mistake of reacting to it the other day and was punished for commenting on moderation. Fair enough, I guess, but the reason for the comment was exasperation at the downvoting of opinion.

And it bites that downvoted comments just fade away, so later readers can no longer consider it, or respond to it. Remember that I am talking about unpopular opinion, which may sometimes be objectively wrong, but not rudely presented. It's common for such additions to the thread to be obliviated through moderation. (I know about showdead, but only learned about it recently).

That's the thing about free speech: we often don't like what other people say. The price we must pay for that freedom is to be exposed to speech we do not like. It's a cost, that we must pay because we are imperfect. We make mistakes, we think incorrectly from time to time. So I say, let it all ride. On HN at least, the culture of thoughtfulness and intellectualism serves to curb the worst rudeness, but let us be willing to expose ourselves to views that we don't agree with. Let's be prepared to have the argument, and possibly be persuaded.

So the next time someone says "You know, I think Trump was an alright president, for <reasons> .. ", curb your outrage. Let it ride, and engage with the argument.

I don’t think I would visit HN if the voting system worked like this. I like hearing the popular opinion, but I also like hearing the popular contrary opinion and very often - like with your comment - the popular contrary sits right below the popular.

What I don’t like reading is “zinger” comments - stuff like “X is bad and people that think X is good are dumb”.

From what I’ve seen - these are the comments downvoted the most. I don’t dislike these comments because they cause me outrage, they just don’t make me feel the same way that well thought out comments - popular and unpopular - make me feel.

Can I comment on moderation since this thread is about censorship and free speech? I guess we'll find out.

Seems I've lost a point. Someone took exception to what I said above. Not sure how I went wrong, but if enough people feel similarly, then my post will fade away. It will be censored. Make of that what you will.

UPDATE: I've got a point back since I wrote this comment. I won't keep editing this comment each time my comment is voted for or against. It's enough to say that people sometimes downvote when they don't like an opinion, or the way it's expressed at least, even if it is not rude.

Although it does seem a little meta, I'd like to do you the favor of telling you why I downvote every time I see someone complain about their downvotes or their post being grayed out.

It's boring. It doesn't make for good conversation. It's not falsifiable and there's nothing to be said about it. You're just unhappy about it, and it just bores me.

Maybe you feel like you're being censored, but really there can only be so much noise amidst the signal. And really, truly, an overlong and doubly updated comment where you are telling us to have our way with you is the least signal you could possibly have generated.

There are lots of complaints to be had about HN, but this is not one of them.

And to be even kinder and open to changing my mind, I thought I might see which comments you were unhappy about having cast into the gray. Would I see some glittering gems worth rescuing?

Unfortunately (predictably?), said comments employ double question marks or otherwise read angrily, or otherwise are simplistic and disagreeable and bring very little insight to the table. (And, you have a number of comments that have not been downvoted, so it's not like this is complete randomness or an inability on HN's part to accept basic facts. There is a correlation to be observed, one that perhaps you're ignoring.)

HN isn't perfect, but I think you doth protest a bit much.

It's not my comments I'm arguing for.

I don't think I'm that hard-done-by. I'm referring to gray comments that don't seem to be particularly hostile, but are just, say, conservative (for example) in nature.

Perhaps I've forgotten, but I don't think I've complained about being downvoted. Today doesn't count. It's not a complaint, just an observation in a thread about free speech and censorship.

Thanks for the feedback.

I've heard people 'just ask questions' or 'make observations' or similar a million times before, and you most certainly have comments that fit the profile of what you've been arguing in favor of. It reads like a deflection, as a result.

Moreover, this is kind of what I mean by comments that aren't falsifiable, that don't really add anything. You're not giving me anything to work with when you gesture vaguely to theoretical comments rather than specific examples. All I have to go on are yours. And yours make for very good counterexamples.

That's fair. Comments on HN don't have a permalink, do they? If so I would have made reference to one that I actually commented on the downvoting of.

Regarding your assessment of my comments, I'm beginning to wonder if your looking at mine and not someone else in the thread. I went looking for the "twice updated" one where I tell you all to have your way with me. I went right through my comment history and can't for the life of me figure out to what you are referring.

every comment here has a permalink. tap on the timestamp.

So they do. Thanks. :-)

You're both right in a way, inane comments complaining about downvotes aren't substantive, but I also see a lot of thoughtful and frankly poignant comments bite the dust because they're just slightly outside the decidedly narrow Overton window of HN discourse.

At the end of the day, on a smallish platform like this, the downvotes do also hurt. Some days it seems more users feel like downvoting everything than upvoting anything and unlike reddit, very few downvotes immediately result in censure.

At the risk of flogging a dead horse, and in the interests of honesty, [1] is a comment that I thought was an example of one downvoted unfairly. It wasn't the first one I've seen downvoted where I thought "Why? It seems they just don't agree." And it probably won't be the last. But it is the first and only time where I've questioned the downvoting in a comment [2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25737065 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25739135

I appreciate you coming back to the thread to give an example. However, the comment appears to no longer be downvoted or flagged.

This illustrates a common misconception about HN's propensity to vote one way or another. Your reply came less than two hours later, whereas the voting isn't complete for a while longer and so the score still has plenty of time to change as the audience continues to process it. This phenomenon (and related handwringing about "is HN reddit now?") can be observed as far back as 2009, and likely even further[1].

You might notice that the comment you replied to (which I would argue is actually demonstrably factually wrong in a few ways, and yet) recovered from its time in the depths beyond. This is likely owing to the fact that it was at least tactfully written, so replies could be written without having to work around the expletive content of the original comment; yours did not, arguably because it was not.

Anyway, this all sort of sidesteps the fact that comment karma was never intended to represent the value of a post or how worthy it is for distribution. It's more like a temperature gauge allowing you to perceive honestly how your comment makes others feel. And disagreement is a feeling too. In the words of 'pg, downvotes have always been used for disagreement.[2]

My first reply to you originally earned one downvote. And I figured it would, from at least one person, but I said it anyway because I believed it should be said. And you have that same ability too. Don't let the numbers get to your head. Just try and have normal conversations with people and the points take care of themselves. (As an example of this, I broke even on my original reply after some time, and gained more in my second reply.) It's rare that people with the ability to read a room and at least attempt to be agreeable in some way end up censured.

Thanks for coming back to this thread! I feel like this became a little more substantive than it was when it began.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=721455

2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392347

"You might notice that the comment you replied to (which I would argue is actually demonstrably factually wrong in a few ways, and yet) recovered from its time in the depths beyond. This is likely owing to the fact that it was at least tactfully written, so replies could be written without having to work around the expletive content of the original comment; yours did not, arguably because it was not."

Yes, I did notice it had been upvoted. The fact that is was no longer gray caused me to question whether it was the comment I was referring to. :-) But it had to be, of course. And so I take your point.

I obviously went off "half-cocked", as I have done a couple of times lately. :-)

Generally speaking I appreciate your points, and I like HN.

Below your [2] link (the PG comment) is one [1] by a petercooper. I think I share petercooper's concerns about downvoting being a means of registering one's disagreement. If your opinions drift too far to the edges of the Overton window, then you stand to be downvoted. I don't like that.

I do take your point that comments that are polite and well formed (so to speak) tend not to be penalised in the long term. I'll watch for that in future.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=395197

Maybe they're just collapsing/folding the comment and sub-comments, not really mean to downvote ?

In all cases ILLEGAL speech can’t be allowed to remain on platform.

There needs to be a high tech system for logging and reporting Illegal Speech to government. And a means for government to take efficient and prompt action.

Disliked speech is not illegal speech and this article states the unique definition that each person has and poses some solves to allow people to use systems that filter out what they dont want to hear in addition to what is illegal.

The issue we are facing is what to do about the legal but disliked speech and whether to forcibly prevent people from hearing or seeing it.

The spirit of of our first amendment is very much the opposite. It is to protect your ability to speak. Our public forum is now virtual, privatized and highly centralized and we didn’t prepare for that as a society.

As they say “...Defend to the death your right to say it.”

The end goal is to make sure "ILLEGAL" speech can not be suppressed. If you can block "illegal" speech you can block legal speech any protocol designed to be immune to censorship will have to make that sacrifice; I am very much willing too.

> In all cases ILLEGAL speech can’t be allowed to remain on platform.

On the contrary. In most cases, it is imperative that illegal speech remain on online platforms. It's bad enough that governments censor criticism, alternative viewpoints (including ones we may abhor), and leaked information using the police, the judicial and prison systems, and their close ties with large media companies.

> Disliked speech is not illegal speech

Not so. There exist all of:

* Well-liked, illegal speech

* Disliked illegal speech

* Well-liked, legal speech

* Disliked legal speech

It seems like you're assuming the law, everywhere, is just and fair and should be not just followed but upheld.

> our first amendment

Most people don't live in the US, you know. In fact, less than 5% of people do. Not that I would agree with you had I lived there, but online content is not a US-local affair.

Private speech is necessarily something that the government cannot monitor. When choosing between ubiquitous surveillance and "illegal speech going unpunished," opposing the former is more important than preventing the latter.