Every chat-board I’ve ever joined and then chose to stay has
been moderated.
The few I glimpsed that had no moderation took five minutes to degenerate into rage, hateful posts, and virtual violence, which was no place I’d voluntarily hang out.
Thus, I confronted
the matter of free speech and censorship with a personal preference, while intellectually
grasping how problematic it is.
Let’s be blunt:
moderated = censored. Censorship means that disinformation and gratuitous
violence is kept out, but vital facts and alternative ways of seeing things can
also be kicked to the annals of the Interwebs.
I know of no way
to settle this that doesn’t harm us in some way. 😬
Personally, I’m
congenitally moderate. I have a tendency to see two sides of most coins. Thus, I
also prefer to keep extremists out of my periphery. Thus, I also live with the
contradiction of approving censoring speech while knowing there’s harm in it.
I don’t know how
you approach this matter, especially because of late both extremism and censorship have increased
to levels that are blatantly detectable. I constantly worry if I’m getting a true set
of facts to evaluate life choices.
So this is where I
sit at the moment: I do not want to hang out where there’s no moderation. But I
think there should be corners of the public sphere that are wholly free. I just
won’t visit them often. I also think that every public space should state that
it is or isn’t moderated.
{Full disclosure: I moderate comments on this (my) blog. To date, I've only censored spam. Trust me you didn't miss much except for links to useless merchandise and a few death threats 👀}
There is no organized party for the likes of us, but if I were the organizer sort I’d be making signs that say:
👉MODERATES
UNITE 👈
(No exclamation,
because— duh— we’re moderates 😉)
