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Comment by hmry | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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