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Religious groups have certainly been responsible for chilling _some_ content in modern times, but they are far from the biggest threat.

The biggest threat is that only a handful of companies operate most of the Internet now and they want it to have all the diversity and culture of a suburban shopping mall.

Religious content bans happen all the time. Consider the ban of Lightyear in 14 countries last week.

Also, it has never been easier to form geographically dispersed but aligned cultural groups.

I don't know which Internet operators you are talking about, but mine does not give a crap about the culture of the content I consume--only the ability to sell me ads about it.

Just because they don't broadcast that they're doing it doesn't mean it's not happening.

I think companies embrace moral relativism and attempt to stay within the Overton Window (or at most dabble near the edges). It's a survival necessity because their own profitability will suffer if they are found to facilitate content that is outside of that window. The Overton Window does drift, which explains how content can suddenly become objectionable in a matter of months.

UK cellular network operators by default enforce an ‘adult content filter’, and require you to provide proof of being over 18 to get this removed (typically in the form of a credit card number as an identifier, not as a mechanism to be charged).

These content filters block large swaths of the internet. Urban Dictionary is the one that trips me up every time I change networks.

LGBTQIA+ related content has typically gotten caught up in this as well.

You’re lucky if your Internet operator does not care. Unfortunately, there’s plenty of places where censorship is rampant, under the guise of just “think of the children.”

I don’t think their remark is limited to conventional religions.

Zealot is the key word. People who are enthusiastically intolerant.

But why do companies want things so bland? It's because of the very vocal religious communities.

> religious zealot groups who conduct absolutely massive campaigns

The campaigns don't even need to be very big. The baseline of organic complaints against the average show/video/site is vanishingly small, so even a group of a few thousand people all hitting the same target at once looks like a tidal wave of backlash by comparison.

"She participated in the famous WELL, back in the 1980s. It is interesting how long this particular struggle, over moderation policies, has been going on."

This has been going on at least since publishers existed (ie. centuries ago).

Publishers have always held the reigns of power, and decided who had a voice and who didn't.

That's where self-publishing comes in, but of course self-publishing and independent platforms/publishers won't have the reach of huge organizations.

At least for now we still have a choice where to turn our attention, even if it's only a minority who'll make the effort to do so and stay informed from outside of mainstream media.

I think the difference is that in the past there were many publishers. You're right that editorialising and censorship has been going on forever, but in the past much of it was kind of (unintentionally) decentralized.

Not that it was always perfect or anything, but this is a key difference. You can get content out there without going through Facebook/Google, but it's much harder. It's like the postal service doing the censorship.

The challenges faced by Facebook and Google are also substantial, although most of these revolve around user-generated content, a bit different from publisher-generated content. Maybe it shouldn't treat them as identical.

> It's like the postal service doing the censorship.

See 18 U.S. Code § 1461

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1461

> I wish we could charge those kinds of groups with the impediment of free speech (at least in the US) and fine them out of existence

That would be an actual violation of free speech, penalizing a legal, private, first amendment-protected activity. Remember, the first amendment only prevents the government from constraining the speech of citizens. Telling an organization, especially a religious organization, what they can and cannot advocate for would be an egregious violation of first amendment protections.

https://xkcd.com/1357/

I get what you are saying, but these groups effectively operate as a DDoS attack against content they do not like. Content which is not promoting or showing anything "bad", it just violates their beliefs.

Those groups are, and would be, free to voice their concerns and beliefs on their own platforms, in their own buildings, etc. I am not saying they should not have an equal right to free speech, just that their should be a cost or penalty for trying to impose your beliefs on all of society via those kinds of organized actions.

But isn't this category of "bad" the entire dispute? People opposed to pornography don't typically agree with your perception that it's just about their individual tastes; they argue that it is "bad", in precisely the same way as racial slurs or planning a crime or any of the things that you and I think obviously need to be prohibited.

> should be a cost or penalty for trying to impose your beliefs on all of society via those kinds of organized actions.

At least in the US, "organized actions" would be protected under "right of the people peaceably to assemble" part of the First Amendment. Unless those organized actions presented a "clear and present danger"[1], it's difficult for me to see how a government could restrain organizing.

1 Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296 (1940)

Sorry, this is a pet peeve of mine. The expression "free speech" has a meaning outside the US constitution. It's like if I were to start quoting the Magna Carta at you. I'd further argue that it clearly has a meaning outside of a legal one.

When the author states they want to fine the groups, specifically in the US, based on violating free speech principles, it is clear that they are referencing the legal free speech in which a government would impose a penalty when an institution violates the law.

My comment was in response to the mention of the US. I could have been more exact, instead of "actual violation of free speech", it would be "an actual violation, in the US, of the First Amendment guarantees of free speech. Outside the US, that doesn't apply.

> What really happens is [...]

Do we have data on this? How do you know this? How does this effect interact with the usual claim of YouTube self-policing to be able to sell ads?