If you count platform moderation as 'censorship' then there's practically no uncensored public spaces on the internet.
Literally even 4chan has moderation.
Nobody, not even 4chan users, want an actually unmoderated space.
Literally even 4chan has moderation.
Nobody, not even 4chan users, want an actually unmoderated space.
In fact, I wouldn't call the latter "moderation" at all, rather it's mods abusing their power to push political propaganda, but they do it through moderation in terms of action.
Thankfully this is extremely rare on the major platforms. "This news story is fake as fuck and is causing trouble such as people going to throw Molotov cocktails at random mosques" is the common scenario.
It made me wonder how unlikely or impossible an event has to be before it would no longer be considered a real threat by whoever or whatever flags posts like that. Firing billionaires into the Sun? Hmm, probably too close to home. Sending them light years away to fire them into a black hole?
That alone shows that the hyothetical "you" is the last person who should be allowed to moderate anything.
That one can only do it within reddit is of course merely a technical limitation. The idea can be implemented much more broadly.
If someone is doing that, it's classified as either a true threat or an incitement, both of which have been clearly established as not covered by the 1st amendment by SCOTUS and thus illegal - and can be stopped for no more reason than the fact that it's illegal.
On the other hand, online content moderation rules often get politically weaponized to silence dissent that is inconvenient but fully legal (and perfectly fine, for as much as you might disagree with it / hate that others get to hear ideas you don't like).
Going from "I voiced my opinion on the internet" to "people are inciting gassing the jews" is quite the stretch, crosses a well defined line, and is just nonsensical.
If 4chan didnt have spam filters, the users would be begging for it almost immediately because the website would become unusable.
What I was trying to point out is that there are a lot of users of these 'edgy' sites that would like to post content that the site owners don't want them posting. So the site owner censors and removes CSAM and piracy so that the site isn't immediately in a legal black hole. The site owners remove content that at least some of the users would want be a use they find it morally or legally objectionable. Spam is kinda orthogonal to that point, since neither the site owner or the users want to see it.
There are forms of moderation that we often dont even think of as moderation or 'censorship' because its removing content that "nobody" wants to see. One may argue that the spammers are users of the site who are being censored.
Also, this is a side note, but I'd assume that the overwhelming majority of even 4chan users are in favour of CSAM being banned from the site, even if there are some users who want to see it (i could be wrong about that, it's not like i even have anecdotes to back that up)
For the two categories mentioned above that are plainly illegal, I think, ironically, you can probably just keep AI classifiers running and wait for calls from NCMEC or DMCA emails, exploiting safe harbor clauses and/or by pointing at reasonable measures you've taken. If you have a large post volumes and short public log retention(private logs will probably have to be kept), that would help keeping the pressure low for those.
Giving an anonymous rando the power to censor my conversation is abhorrent. And it's absurd that most people are ok with that.
Yes? Moderation is a form of censorship with a different connotation (the one you agree with vs the other you don't). I don't see how it's controversial
You may agree or disagree with the ban, but surely you agree that we should be aware of such Overton window enforcement?