posted on March 22, 2023 08:47 PM by
u/_ShadowElemental
25
u/_ShadowElemental55 pointsat 1679518168.000000
Main post: > Censorship is the abnormal activity of ensuring that
people in power approve of the information on your platform, regardless
of what your customers want.
> Censorship is the abnormal activity of ensuring that people in power approve of the information on your platform, regardless of what your customers want.
As a /r/badphilosophy mod, I have to say: it's fun
We used to call the hellban the "shadow pool" for Dota 2. The game also has an overt "behavior score" (civility score) that affects matchmaking, at the same ELO with a low behavior score the quality goes down significantly.
It's moderation if it's implemented as a filter that you can disable. It's censorship if someone in power does it and you can't turn the filter off. Didn't you read the post? :)
I'm not offended by the fact that it's wrong, I'm offended by the fact that Scott Alexander clearly thinks that he can convince us it's a syllogism when it's actually a tautology.
Other people who think this way usually at least have the decency to not act like they think that they're being *very clever* about it.
TL;DR Scott thinks that moderation is fine, and “censorship” isn’t.
His view (which he does not implement in his own site’s comments section
at all) is that moderation is fine as long its implemented as a
kind of “optional filter” that users can turn off, and when you can’t
turn off the filter it becomes censorship.
Plenty of sites have tried this, but out in the real world it
produces lousy UX, since it means that different people will see
different versions of the same conversation (and most people in a
society will end up reading with filters turned on, which will of course
result in exactly the same cries of censorship from exactly the same
rationalist-affiliated people.) Moreover, we already have a
mechanism for turning off the filters: it’s called going over to 4chan.
There are in fact many sites on the Internet, and that’s the beauty of
the place.
I want to sneer more here, but this isn’t even thoughtful enough to
support a sneer. It’s just disappointing to see this kind of weak-tea
nonsense coming from people with such strong opinions about “free
speech.” I also refuse to read the comments, which are no doubt loaded
with people pretending they’re being persecuted because they couldn’t
put their racist content on Twitter and/or who are excited because they
assume Elon Musk will allow them to put their racist content on Twitter
now.
Even 4chan has 'censorship' posting child exploitation material there gets you a ban (at least I think it does, never tested it, never went looking for it either, but these are the stories) even when a part of its 'customer' (lol at scott for using that word) base wants to see that shit.
This isnt to defend 4chan or anything but just to show that all places moderate/censor if they don't want to end up like horrible places (more horrible than 4chan. Iirc 8kun does have the child porn (once again didn't check), as that is where the open pedos went after 4chan banned it (that even 4chan does 'censorship' should be telling to the 'no censorship' people but yeah it will not as often it isn't about censorship at all. And that is why you get half baked thought-pieces on censorship with holes in them so big even the average r/ssc reader [spots them](https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/ykpegd/moderation_is_different_from_censorship/iuv9yzk/) )
I do think there is a clear difference in deleting/banning rulebreaking content (pornography, gore, calls for and threats of violence, NSFW in general) from the blue (SFW) boards, and just deleting/banning because you don't agree with the things being posted, like banning the wrong politics from the politics board.
As for cp stuff, it was never allowed on 4chan, and the lolicon board was deleted more than a decade and a half ago (?).
A lot of people assume anything goes on 4chan, but you can and will get banned for posting the nword anywhere if someone bothers to actually report you and a janitor or moderator sees it. It's rather an issue of users not reporting rulebreaking content, and the boards moving too fast for the janitors/mods to keep up.
I do remember (and this is in a historical sense) when i was writing
some stuff on 18th century newspapes how this one guy was insistent on
differentiating censorship from the variety of other attempts
to control the press at the time.
As an example, during the early Age of Liberty (one of the reasons
it’s called the Age of Liberty was that this was eventually
abolished) Sweden had censorship: There was an office where a
censor would read through any book prior to
publication and either ban it completely or, more often, make
various changes (editing out offending passages, etc.) (there is a
further point that the Censor for several years mostly just corrected
people’s spelling and grammar mistakes….) now, at this point they were
two ruling parties, the Hats and the Caps. The Caps were expecting to
lose the next elections, so they quickly enacted a freedom of the press
statute so they could spend the next few years insulting the new Hat
Government (this also involved, arguably more importantly, freedom of
access to government documents)
Anyway, after a coup d’etat this was somewhat restricted and a new
censor’s office was instituted, after a royal assassination, a lost war,
and getting one of Napoleon’s Marshalls to come be king it was once
again revised, this time without a censor’s office.
Note that there were still things that were illegal to print, but
rather than having the censor look at any proposed publication
prior to publishing this was instead done by post-facto
retracting any publication that was found to be illegal. This turned out
to be an important difference: The king came into conflict with a
newspaper (Aftonbladet) and had it retracted. The next day the paper
came out with a new issue under the name “The New Aftonbladet”, This
continued up to “The Fourteenth Aftonbladet” before the king gave up.
(after this this kind of control of the press was only used
sporadically: It wasn’t very useful)
Apart from talking about a highly simplified incident out of swedish
press history, I’m just doing this to be a pedant, and to point out that
in most cases moderators don’t act as censors: (though therea re forums
and such where they do) because rather than reading through and
checking your posts beforehand they just remove them after
publication.
Main post: > Censorship is the abnormal activity of ensuring that people in power approve of the information on your platform, regardless of what your customers want.
In the comments section: > Comment removed.
The true face of evil: a Scott Alexander syllogism
It’s only censorship when someone with blue hair does it.
TL;DR Scott thinks that moderation is fine, and “censorship” isn’t. His view (which he does not implement in his own site’s comments section at all) is that moderation is fine as long its implemented as a kind of “optional filter” that users can turn off, and when you can’t turn off the filter it becomes censorship.
Plenty of sites have tried this, but out in the real world it produces lousy UX, since it means that different people will see different versions of the same conversation (and most people in a society will end up reading with filters turned on, which will of course result in exactly the same cries of censorship from exactly the same rationalist-affiliated people.) Moreover, we already have a mechanism for turning off the filters: it’s called going over to 4chan. There are in fact many sites on the Internet, and that’s the beauty of the place.
I want to sneer more here, but this isn’t even thoughtful enough to support a sneer. It’s just disappointing to see this kind of weak-tea nonsense coming from people with such strong opinions about “free speech.” I also refuse to read the comments, which are no doubt loaded with people pretending they’re being persecuted because they couldn’t put their racist content on Twitter and/or who are excited because they assume Elon Musk will allow them to put their racist content on Twitter now.
Censorship is moderation that you don’t like. Moderation is censorship that you do like.
vice signaling again about his performative neutrality, considering communists as bad as nazis
[deleted]
I do remember (and this is in a historical sense) when i was writing some stuff on 18th century newspapes how this one guy was insistent on differentiating censorship from the variety of other attempts to control the press at the time.
As an example, during the early Age of Liberty (one of the reasons it’s called the Age of Liberty was that this was eventually abolished) Sweden had censorship: There was an office where a censor would read through any book prior to publication and either ban it completely or, more often, make various changes (editing out offending passages, etc.) (there is a further point that the Censor for several years mostly just corrected people’s spelling and grammar mistakes….) now, at this point they were two ruling parties, the Hats and the Caps. The Caps were expecting to lose the next elections, so they quickly enacted a freedom of the press statute so they could spend the next few years insulting the new Hat Government (this also involved, arguably more importantly, freedom of access to government documents)
Anyway, after a coup d’etat this was somewhat restricted and a new censor’s office was instituted, after a royal assassination, a lost war, and getting one of Napoleon’s Marshalls to come be king it was once again revised, this time without a censor’s office.
Note that there were still things that were illegal to print, but rather than having the censor look at any proposed publication prior to publishing this was instead done by post-facto retracting any publication that was found to be illegal. This turned out to be an important difference: The king came into conflict with a newspaper (Aftonbladet) and had it retracted. The next day the paper came out with a new issue under the name “The New Aftonbladet”, This continued up to “The Fourteenth Aftonbladet” before the king gave up. (after this this kind of control of the press was only used sporadically: It wasn’t very useful)
Apart from talking about a highly simplified incident out of swedish press history, I’m just doing this to be a pedant, and to point out that in most cases moderators don’t act as censors: (though therea re forums and such where they do) because rather than reading through and checking your posts beforehand they just remove them after publication.