Nobody Wants to Go There

Casey Newton:

All of this sets aside the fact that there is a strong market demand for content moderation. Platforms that allow extremism to proliferate quickly become ghost towns; most people don’t want to see racist idiocy every time they log on. Platforms remove hate speech and various other forms of harm primarily because to allow it to remain poses an existential threat to their businesses.

As with everything in content moderation, all of us would draw the lines differently according to our own beliefs. But Texas makes it a crime to draw almost any lines at all, and it’s extremely difficult to imagine how any big site could function in the state in a world where HB20 stands.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: if you want more speech, you have to accept some moderation. There are websites online with very little moderation, and they are widely considered to be hellscapes that most people see as a red flag when they tell you they visit them (to test this, on your next date tell the other person that you're really into 8chan and see if they're more or less into you 🚩).

Again I find myself wondering why I'm the one, a bleeding heart liberal, telling Texas (and Florida before it) that governments mandating moderation rules for private companies is government overreach.