Moderation just leads to censorship. Upvote / downvotes are good enough on their own, we don’t need someone babysitting us.
Run something unmoderated long enough and, depending where you are, you'll have law enforcement knocking on your door.
Hacker News has downvotes and people here disagree all the time. It's subjective but it even feels like downvoting and disagreement have increased over time, so the presence of downvotes at best doesn't seem to have an effect and at worse seems to encourage disagreement.
In fact, I actually can't think of a platform for which your claim is actually true.
I welcome censorship on my personal site because I control the censorship.
Likewise I'd like the option of controlling the conversation for responses to my posts. You're welcome to say whatever you want about me - under your own threads.
You're not going to get much sympathy if your stance is censorship = bad
> Upvote / downvotes are good enough on their own
Not sure I've seen this work. It's not good enough for Reddit or HN, both of which have heavy moderation.
For a small site the argument is that there are many other small sites you could go to if you got kicked out of one or the other.
For a site like Facebook or YouTube, however, it starts looking more and more like an essential public utility. I think of a case in my town where there is a person who is being a real jerk to their neighbors who run a "BiPOC garden". They've filed a federal discrimination case which probably won't accomplish anything because discrimination law applies to landlords, employers and similar gatekeepers -- like the stork said in this book
https://www.paperbackswap.com/Nuts-Nightingale-Sweet-Jacquel...
"You can't make a law that makes people be nice"
Bad actors are especially egregious in spaces dedicated toward a niche topic. Want to talk about hiking in a hiking forum? Nope! Ends up in culture war talking points and racial epithets.
That might be the type of communication platform you'd like, but the vast majority of people disagree. Good moderation is a Godsend, and dismissing it as "censorship" is a thought terminating cliche.
Moderation is a private entity activity
Censorship is merely the act of limiting access to information. It doesn't matter who is doing this. Yes, governments often do it, but so can private entities. An individual can even do it to himself, in the form of self-censorship.
Moderation is the application of censorship in order to modify a discussion. Once again, anyone could potentially do this, including governments. An individual can do this to himself, too, by selectively choosing which parts of a discussion to consume.
Hackernews is censored fairly strongly, and moderated "ok".
If a thread gets too many replies it is censored. If dang finds your comment personally offensive but it's not against the rules, it will be removed.
It's a fine line between moderation and censorship unfortunately.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41252028
I've been timed out by dang for inciting flamewars, I took my time out like an adult and learned to improve my communication
If you don't like the moderation policies of HN, there are plenty of other places you can make comments. Continuing on your "censorship" opinion is likely to earn you more downvotes and flags from other users
I didn't take it personally. Censorship exists and dang perpetrates it. Nothing wrong with learning that.
>Continuing on your "censorship" opinion is likely to earn you more downvotes and flags from other users
Why would I care if people get upset at me understanding something? It's not an opinion. It's a fact. You asked. Why would I not answer objectively?
I'm more than happy for you to remain in the dark on this matter if that's what you prefer.
...by the community, which is not "censored" by most definitions of the word, which almost always refer to a single powerful entity doing the censoring.