> A minimum viable product for moderation without censorship is for a platform to do exactly the same thing they’re doing now...but have an opt-in setting
There's one problem with that. Often times, the product itself is the moderated version.
Letting users use a product with moderation turned off would be giving them what they want, but it would not be giving them "the product".
Some people want to sell their custom mechanical keyboards. They think, "I know where a bunch of potential customers are, /r/mk/!"
Queue the sub getting flooded with sales posts, and the moderators banning such posts. Now they have rule #2 and moderate accordingly.
OP's solution is to castrate the moderators by instead of allowing them to remove posts, only allowing them to hide posts. Then users who want to break the rules can simply toggle them.
But we already have a better solution: Just go somewhere else! Right there in the text of rule #2, there is a link to /r/mechmarket/, which is its own subreddit, moderated for the buying and selling of mechanical keyboards.
---
But, of course, that doesn't work with social media. There is only one Facebook. Only one Twitter. They are global namespaces. There is no room for traditional moderation. And that is its own problem.
It's hard to have meaningful conversation when every participant in your social circle, or even in the world is standing at their own soapbox. It's as useless as a daily company-wide meeting.
---
We don't just need to fight disinformation. We need to fight for information, for discussion. We need to show people who are busily engaged in identity politics that there are more interesting conversations to be had. Social media is a really poorly equipped space for those conversations, because it isn't moderated.
> A minimum viable product for moderation without censorship is for a platform to do exactly the same thing they’re doing now...but have an opt-in setting
There's one problem with that. Often times, the product itself is the moderated version.
Letting users use a product with moderation turned off would be giving them what they want, but it would not be giving them "the product".
---
For example, people want a space where they can talk about mechanical keyboards. So they go to https://old.reddit.com/r/mechanicalkeyboards/
Some people want to sell their custom mechanical keyboards. They think, "I know where a bunch of potential customers are, /r/mk/!"
Queue the sub getting flooded with sales posts, and the moderators banning such posts. Now they have rule #2 and moderate accordingly.
OP's solution is to castrate the moderators by instead of allowing them to remove posts, only allowing them to hide posts. Then users who want to break the rules can simply toggle them.
But we already have a better solution: Just go somewhere else! Right there in the text of rule #2, there is a link to /r/mechmarket/, which is its own subreddit, moderated for the buying and selling of mechanical keyboards.
---
But, of course, that doesn't work with social media. There is only one Facebook. Only one Twitter. They are global namespaces. There is no room for traditional moderation. And that is its own problem.
It's hard to have meaningful conversation when every participant in your social circle, or even in the world is standing at their own soapbox. It's as useless as a daily company-wide meeting.
---
We don't just need to fight disinformation. We need to fight for information, for discussion. We need to show people who are busily engaged in identity politics that there are more interesting conversations to be had. Social media is a really poorly equipped space for those conversations, because it isn't moderated.