Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation
This is a very good way to pitch your afforestation startup accelerator in the guise of a talk on platform moderation. &#x2F;s<p>I&#x27;m pretty sure I&#x27;ve got some bones to pick with yishan from his tenure on Reddit, but everything he&#x27;s said here is pretty understandable.<p>Actually, I would like to develop his point about &quot;censoring spam&quot; a bit further. It&#x27;s often said that the Internet &quot;detects censorship as damage and routes around it&quot;. This is propaganda, of course; a fully censorship-resistant Internet is entirely unusable. In fact, the easiest way to censor someone online is through harassment, or DDoS attacks - i.e. have a bunch of people shout at you until you shut up. Second easiest is through doxing - i.e. make the user feel unsafe until they jump off platform and stop speaking. Neither of these require content removal capability, but they still achieve the goal of censorship.<p>The point about old media demonizing moderation is something I didn&#x27;t expect, but it makes sense. This <i>is</i> the same old media that gave us cable news, after all. Their goal is not to inform, but to allure. In fact, I kinda wish we had a platform that explicitly refused to give them the time of day, but I&#x27;m pretty sure it&#x27;s illegal to do that now[0], and even back a decade ago it would be financial suicide to make a platform only catering to individual creators.<p>[0] For various reasons:<p>- The EU Copyright Directive imposes an upload filtering requirement on video platforms that needs cooperation with old media companies in order to implement. The US is also threatening similar requirements.<p>- Canada Bill C-11 makes Canadian content (CanCon) must-carry for all Internet platforms, including ones that take user-generated content. In practice, it is easier for old media to qualify as CanCon than actual Canadian individuals.