Skip to main content
I've seen it before and again today so I'll repeat it: Centralized social media platforms aren't bad because they are censoring (=moderating) too much, they're bad because they aren't moderating enough. Sure, there are egregious examples of progressive political speech suppressed on Facebook and Twitter, but it is relatively little compared to the massive amount of discriminatory speech that is not suppressed when it definitely should.

#socialmedia #decentralization
#socialmedia #decentralization
silverwizard
silverwizard  
I mean, is it more that they are doing both? They are censoring for an agenda that is very harmful?
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan  
The only consistent agenda I've seen so far from Facebook and Twitter has been to maximize engagement and some mild bothsideism. It is harmful, of course, but it is kind of parallel to the more harmful political agendas around. In particular, actual censorship runs against their agenda as content removal reduces engagement overall.
silverwizard
silverwizard  
I mean, there is pro-America bias, and a couple of other weird biases. But yes
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan  
I believe I addressed this with "too much" in the original post.
silverwizard
silverwizard  
I accept that. I just meant that they were also *not* moderating
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan  
I believe I addressed this with "[not] moderating enough" in the original post.

It seems we are fully agreeing, so I'm not sure what we are arguing about, although I always enjoy arguing with you, no matter the subject.
silverwizard
silverwizard  
This isn't argument! It's just anti-contradiction!
Alexander
Alexander  
I'd say the problem isn't in amount of moderation but how uncontrollable and often unexpected it is for their users.

Similar problem sometimes exists on larger fedi instances.

What we need is further decentralization and making people see that huge variety of independent and diverse nodes is actually an advantage. But it is tricky.
Alexander
Alexander  
Yes, this kind of thing really bugs me. Not the blocking functionality itself - i fully accept anyone's right to curate their experience and experience of their guests. But how non-transparent it is and how easily instance admins make such decisions.

Not everyone on Fediverse knows how this works too so for them broken discussion threads and people missing from their feeds are seen as glitches. This creates bad user experience, as if the system itself is unfriendly and unreliable.
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan  
Yeah, I've seen a mocking image of a Twitter conversation where most posts are hidden, each with their own reason ( "account suspended", "deleted by author", "account is protected", "masked by OP") but I believe this is the way to go.
Alexander
Alexander  
Certainly.

Some people think letting blocked people know they are blocked is a bad idea but personally I think this is not an issue. I am pretty sure someone set out to harass or stalk someone will know their blocked status very soon anyway (by comments disappearing, checking out the other instance, etc) because they are um.... motivated and want to provoke response.
⇧