YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud
A lot of short, knee-jerk reactions on this thread, not to mention snark and downright flame. Seeing as this is at the top of HN right now, can we try to elevate the level of discourse a little bit? A few questions to consider:<p>1. Is content moderation necessary in online platforms?<p>I think the answer to this question is self-evident, but others may disagree and so I think it&#x27;s worth posing. FWIW, HN has moderation, both official (e.g., dang) and unofficial (anyone with enough karma to flag&#x2F;downvote). There&#x27;s also built-in protections against flamewars (i.e., algorithmic moderation). I don&#x27;t think HN would be the same place without these elements. Feel free to disagree.<p>2. If the answer to #1 is yes, how should content moderation happen?<p>This is a tough problem, and it&#x27;s a lot to easier to find fault than to propose workable solutions. I definitely would prefer a more democratic moderation scheme for these mega-platforms that dominate online media today. But in some sense, every form of online moderation (HN included) has been top-down. And as we&#x27;ve seen in the US and elsewhere, democracy itself is prone to fracturing.<p>It&#x27;s almost like we need a constitution for online governance. But could we ever agree on such a constitution in the first place? Does it need to be legislated (and if so, how do we get global consensus)? Can it be bootstrapped from the bottom up?<p>3. Setting aside the question of who gets to decide, should moderation be based on tone, factuality, importance of the topic, ...? How does one determine factuality? Is there something special about political matters that makes it off-limits for moderation? What if politics intersects with other matters (which probably is the case more often than not) - as in the case of COVID?<p>And of course, it&#x27;s probably impossible to separate these questions from the question of &quot;who gets to decide&quot;. That lies at the heart of all of these &quot;what about X&quot; complaints elsewhere in the thread. Truth often matters less than trust, and trust is in short supply these days.<p>Again, it&#x27;s easy to criticize, but these are difficult questions. There are few easy choices. And unfortunately for the people who work on these platforms, inaction is also a choice, as I&#x27;m sure they&#x27;re well aware.