This site is frequently characterised by right-wing and Libertarian tr0lls as a liberal or progressive “echo chamber” because it has specific rules and active moderation. Yet somehow, not allowing bigoted and fascist rhetoric, calls for violence, political and scientific disinformation, etc. does not prevent vigorous, healthy, and rational debate. So it’s going very well here. If conservatives and Libertarians still have a problem with the site leaning liberal or progressive due to those rules, they might want to consider why such rules are at odds with their ideologies and philosophies.
What’s not going well is that the major social media platforms and – to a lesser degree – techno-utopian freeze peach sites like SSC have abdicated responsibility for content moderation. Do you want ants Nazis in the public sphere, because that’s how you get ants Nazis in the public sphere.
It’s not about getting people off of shared platforms, it’s about de-platforming users and groups who arrive to promote discredited ideologies, sell dangerous woo and disinformation, and promote hateful ideas. The point is not to prevent them from discussing those ideas in their own (one hopes obscure) forums, but to keep them from spreading those reprehensible ideas to a wider audience. Whether we’re talking about ISIS or America’s domestic right-wing terrorists, the process of radicalisation and the gateway methods of initiation they use are well known at this point. Effectively unmoderated platforms, including BBS’s and social networks, are tailor-made for these malicious actors to spread their poison.
Another false equivalency. Rght now we see one “weird civic religion” rejecting liberal democracy and the other side trying to maintain liberal-democratic norms and institutions. It’s the former that’s responsible for the last five years, not the latter.
That’s why you should be focusing on Net Neutrality, anti-trust regulation, strengthened and improved Section 230 protections, and decentralised/federated/FOSS alternative social networks. Establish those things and you don’t have to worry about oligarchy or free speech being stifled. And yet, presented with these methods to eliminate enormous and entrenched private interests exercising "editorial control"t (really moderation) over user-generated conten, Libertarians and conservatives instead choose to whinge about supposed censorship by “PC liberal elites” and “echo chambers” as they fight anti-trust regulation, support opponents of Net Neutrality, and call for the complete elimination of Section 230.
