<
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/03/30/why-moderating-content-actually-does-more-to-support-the-principles-of-free-speech/>
"Obviously over the past few years there’s been all of these debates about the
content moderation practices of various websites. We’ve written about it a ton,
including in our Content Moderation Case Study series (currently on hiatus, but
hopefully back soon). The goal of that series was to demonstrate that content
moderation is rarely (if ever) about “censoring” speech, and almost always
about dealing with extremely challenging decisions that any website has to deal
with if they host content from users. Some of that involves legal requirements,
some of it involves trying to keep a community focused, some of it involves
dealing with spam, and some of it involves just crazy difficult decisions about
what kind of community you want.
And yet, there are still those who insist that any forms of content moderation
are either censorship or somehow “against the principles of free speech.”
That’s the line we keep hearing. Last week in the discussion regarding Elon
Musk’s poll about whether or not Twitter “supported” free speech, people kept
telling me that the key point was about the “principles of free speech,” rather
than what the law says. This discussion also came up recently with regards to
the various discussions on cancel culture.
I understand where this impulse comes from — because I had it in the past
myself. Over a decade ago I was invited to give a talk to policy people running
one of the large user-generated content platforms, and it was chock full of
former ACLU/free speech lawyers. And I remember one of them asking me if I had
thoughts on when it would be okay for them to remove content. I started to say
that it should be avoided at almost all costs… when they began tossing out
example after example that began to make me realize that “never” is not an
answer that works here. I still recommend listening to a Radiolab episode from
a few years ago that does an amazing job laying out the impossible choices when
it comes to content moderation. It highlights how not only is “never” not a
reasonable option, but how no matter what rules you set, you will be faced with
an unfathomable number of cases where the “right” answer or the “right” way to
apply a policy is not at all clear.
Lawyer Akiva Cohen recently had a really worthwhile thread that explains why
the entire concept of a “philosophical commitment to free speech” is somewhat
meaningless if you think it’s distinct from government consequence. The key
point that he makes is that once you separate the “principles” or the
“philosophy” of free speech from legal consequences, you’re simply down to
debating competing speech and associations"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
