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Comment by analog8374 | Hacker News Reader

When is censorship ok?

We have moderators, here in hn. We also have them in reddit.

So sometimes we like censorship and sometimes we don't.

Censorship by a website moderator means you need to move to another website to express your ideas. Censorship by the government means you need to move to another country.

Censorship on an app hosting page means you need to host your app somewhere else. Censorship on the only app hosting page allowed means you can't host your app at all.

Speaking of reddit: that doesn't justify a miniscule amount of people deciding what the rest of users may express.

What is your proposed alternative, though?

Silos. You can create your own and say anything you want (only constrained by the law). Everyone else can join it, or blacklist it, for themselves. Nobody gets to shut off someone else's silo, they can only ignore it for themselves. Nobody gets to decide what other people choose to read or write.

For the case of Reddit, a silo maps nicely onto a subreddit. Within any subreddit the moderator can have full control, they can moderate it exactly as they choose. If you don't like it, create your own where you will have free rein.

That already exists, it’s called a website.

That's a good point. But for all practical purposes, Facebook, Reddit, and other major social networks represent what the web means to an average person. Many of them never even open a browser. So those major social networks should be treated more like a public square, for the discoverability that provides, if nothing else. And in the context of sites being delisted and apps being banned (Google, Apple, etc), it would be nice for major social networks to be committed to free speech on their platforms.

What about content that is illegal in the country that your "silo" is hosted in, like, say, CSAM (but you can really really substitute anything else illegal there, like eg. planning terrorist attacks)? If a "silo" is CSAM-friendly or its express purpose is posting it and its moderators don't want to remove illegal content, what then?

I hope there are no legal jurisdictions that are actually CSAM-friendly. But this isn't a unique problem, there are many situations in the world where legal jurisdictions are muddy. For example, when over-the-air television signals can be received across country borders. Just let the law sort it out. Admittedly, it's more difficult for companies that operate in multiple countries, but they're already managing to do it today. The main hope is, that companies will not add any additional censorship themselves, and that an attitude of free exchange and tolerance, would be the default position for more of us than it is today.

What is censorship except arbitrary enforcement of a funnel that leads to centralization (of ideas, app stores, etc.)

On reddit moderators can even be local to a sub, so you may just need to move to another one.

But is HN the only forum for tech discussions available to you?

The whole point is that both phone platforms are required to participate in modern life. Imagine if your water or electricity company decides not to supply your house. There is a reason such fundamental services are made into universal rights and do not follow the usual competition rules.

Apple/Google can’t be both the store, the device and the OS.

I think it's inversely correlated with power, influence and reach. HN and Reddit don't have guns, can't throw you in prison, and there are lots of social medias to choose from, so a fair bit of censorship can be tolerated. Apple can't deport you, but you also don't have a lot of other choices, very low tolerance for censorship. The Government can really ruin your life if you get on the wrong side and your options for changing it or escaping it are pretty limited, we should demand the highest levels of transparency. Sure, some secrecy around military and intelligence for a little while, but we should eventually know what they decided and why.

Censorship is fundamentally poisonous. Even without all that other stuff.

This is dogmatic reasoning. If censorship wasn't necessary, neither would the government. At sufficient scale, humans stop behaving in the best interest of the group, and you need ways to correct that. It'll never be perfect, but much like democracy, we don't know of a better system.

Surely, in a conversation, the most damaging thing you can do to the integrity of that conversation is to selectively nullify the voice of a participant.

It ceases to be a conversation then. It is something else, posing as a conversation.

Maybe it would be better if this censorship-power is democratically controlled. But if this power is given to an individual. Well that's different.

In order to have a conversation at all, you need to deal with the guy with the megaphone first. If you do not have moderation, you drown in spam, and do not have a conversation at all.

Whenever you enter a community, you implicitly agree to a small contract with the community. If I enter a running community, it's assumed that I'm not there to talk about cooking pasta, if I sign up to a book club, people will surely get tired of me if I don't stop yapping about music.

There's of course leeway around this, but communities, generally, have purpose, implicit (built by the community) and explicit (what it says on the sign).

We are okay with censorship when it serves to that purpose. We like it when HNs and Reddit delete viagra ads in comments. We don't like it when it runs contrary to or subverts the purpose of the communities. The userbase here would have gotten pretty mad if the threads about Cloudflare yesterday were deleted, as they evidently are of interest regarding current tech, and they would also have been pretty mad if anyone criticizing Cloudflare was banned, as we are supposed to be able to freely comment on such matters.

This is much more common on Reddit, where mods (and users!) will often silence stuff they don't like, even if relevant. This creates conflict regarding the two types of purpose mentioned before.

Now, countries should have as much censorship as they want, this is already patent in hate speech laws around the globe, before anyone brings up the 1st, do note that the US could also (at least in theory) change the constitution if the people so wished. Extreme caution should be taken in this regard though as one does not simply "stop being member of a country".

>Whenever you enter a community, you implicitly agree to a small contract with the community. If I enter a running community, it's assumed that I'm not there to talk about cooking pasta, if I sign up to a book club, people will surely get tired of me if I don't stop yapping about music.

No. If you're running, you can talk about pasta all you want. If you participate in the book club discussion, no one cares if you also talk about music.

I think the key here is choice.

Are there other sites where you can discuss the things you use Hacker News for, without much of a loss? Then it's probably moderation.

Is this the only forum that matters with respect to a certain topic? Then it's probably censorhip.

For example, if a private company controls the de-facto subreddit for a topic or product and uses that to control the narrative then it's more like censorship than moderation.

Also, it sounds like you think it's black-and-white but it's much more gray than that and something one might call moderation someone else might call censorship, and there might not be a clear-cut answer.

It's ok when users have choice. Those who don't like HN moderation can hang out somewhere else (and many do).

Not using app stores isn't an option for most users, especially on iOS.

"If you don't like it you can leave" strikes me as an evasion of my point.

The fact is, we sometimes like censorship. Which is funny.

Just because it's here doesn't mean it's liked. Various factors contribute to whether any given site is moderated, and to what degree. It's almost never just "the will of the users".

When the subject arises, the consensus seems to be that moderation (and thus censorship) is indispensable.

I blame a deep, possible even genetic, authoritarianism.

It seems obvious to me that we just don't mind delegating this task some of the time, as long as we largely agree with the results.

I don't think you need an appeal to authoritarianism to appreciate a forum that isn't 80% penis-enlargment ads. A few people spending their time to moderate this content saves the whole group a lot of time.

In the same way that I'm okay with other people deciding a tomato is too moldy to sell (whether that's the farmer, health inspector, or grocer), I'm also okay with some people having the power to remove the equivalent speech from certain spaces.

You just need to be more careful when the jurisdiction becomes larger, because it becomes harder to "vote with your feet" to go to a place whose policies you agree with.

One answer is client-side based moderaton social networks.

If I want to read moderated comments I should be allowed to. Or in the same way I could choose to let others block things for me.

Doing this entirely on the client side falls down when you want to moderate something because there's too much of it (e.g. bulk spam)

The fix for that is to join your own community spam filter. It's the same way ad-block works. Community run blocklists.

I don't think servers blocking denial-of-service spam attacks is the same socially as moderators censoring speech they don't agree with. The same goes for content that is illegal for servers to host.

Right. The issue is not about client-side vs server-side, it's about the user being in control.

Yes. Exactly.

I prefer that I choose, 100% , who I talk to and what I say.

And if somebody offers me the service of filtering or editing all that, I have that option.

This is kind of a "why do we have law at all" level conversation.

Moderation is okay when it properly adjusts signal-to-noise ratio of discussion.

Censorship is about suppressing opinions which fall out of Overton's window, which is not okay, as all it does is to enforce status quo.

There was a good blogpost by Ex-reddit engineers about it where the idea was to treat it as signal which you cannot understand, and your core purpose as moderation(from automated PoV) is to adjust the signal to noise ratio without being able to comprehend/read the underlying data.

A bit hypocritical of them, looking at how reddit's moderation works.

Frankly i'm also against private censorship in case of social media - as it is basically outsourced government censorship.

The problem is that there are regulations passed to centralize requirements on censorship, it helps incumbents by making it too burdensome for new companies to enter the market. Existing corporations publicly state their desire to let the government be the arbiter. It's a delicate balance and governments prefer to act slowly to ensure the right outcome.

The mods on HN don't have police forces and standing armies with guns.

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