Moderation isn't censorship, except sometimes

Moderation and censorship are different things, but one is sometimes used to excuse or blame the other.

Moderation isn’t censorship — at least, not inherently. Moderation is the platform’s own speech — censorship is the silencing of other people’s speech. Moderation is good for business, censorship is when its bad for business.

The difference has been clear for centuries with things like newspapers. A newspaper’s editor-in-chief has to set the policies for what they do and do not publish. Their content is speech, and they decide what they want to say. Moderation is a form of speech.

The issue is confused for social-media because they don’t write their own content, but serve as a platform for others. But even if they don’t write the content, the platform still has a voice. They have a purpose, a goal. They will want to curate content that promotes that purpose, and restrict content that doesn’t. They don’t want to be a 4can free-for-all where anybody can say anything.

Art museums work the same way. Technically, they have no content of their own. But still, they have a purpose. A modern art museum wants modern art, the Louvre wants older works, the British Museum wants even older artifacts, and so on. Music radio stations don’t create their own music, but broadcast rock, hard rock, classic, golden oldies, and so on, to appeal to specific markets.

Today’s major platforms moderate hate-speech, misinformation, and porn — because that’s not their purpose. Sure, there are other platforms dedicated to such things, like the infamous 4chan, but they serve a tiny market. For the mass market, such content offends more than it attracts users. Major platforms must moderate this stuff or become minor platforms.

Major social-media platforms probably don’t want political bias. Sure, old media often targets partisan readers/viewers (notoriously, MSNBC appealing to Democrats and Fox News to Republicans). But social-media thrives on engagement, which only happens when people disagree with each other. A community where everyone agrees will be boring. “Truth Social”, Trump’s right-wing social-media platform isn’t popular among the right-wing because it largely consists of people yelling agreement at each other. As far as I can tell, the way they use Truth Social is to learn what to say, and then use that information to go on Twitter and argue that point of view.

That doesn’t mean all moderation is inherently good. Moderation is frequently used as an excuse for censorship. Those demanding censorship claim what they want is moderation. This is false. When you remove content to best serve your platform’s purpose, it’s “moderation”. When it’s done because of somebody else’s interest, it’s “censorship”. When you decide yourself that hate-speech is bad for business, it’s “moderation”. When others demand it of you, it’s “censorship”.

The best demonstration of the difference is the [s02e22] episode of the 1980s sitcom “WKRP In Cincinnati”. It deals with a Christian church pressuring the rock station to stop broadcasting songs they find objectionable, by going after advertisers. A scene near the end perfectly describes the problem, with the station’s program director (the guy responsible for determining which songs to play) calling this coercion “censorship”.

Station owner: Andy this is Dr. Hollier. Bob, this is Andy, he’s my program director.
Andy: That’s right I'm the program director my job is to a program the music I think our listeners would like to hear. If I'm wrong our ratings go down and I get fired. It's called the free enterprise system and it works pretty well.
Dr. Bob Hollier: Mmm, well some people don't like the records you program. They fight back. It's called a democracy and it works pretty well
Andy: It's called censorship and you can call it a rose if you like but it still stinks.

In this scene, Andy’s job is content moderation, choosing rock music rather than classical music. What the preacher is demanding is censorship. If it’s one thing you remember from this post, remember that scene: the person in charge of moderation is complaining about censorship.

Imagine a billionaire swoops in to buy the WKRP radio station, to stop the censoring of rock lyrics. He’s still got a moderation problem. He’s still got to program the music listeners want to hear. He’s still going to avoid music that’ll offend listeners.

We live in a culture where it’s became normal for outsiders to pressure platforms to “moderate” content. This is censorship. If you want to cancel your NYTimes subscription because you no longer want to read its content, that’s fine. When you cancel your subscription in an effort to pressure them into removing content others might read, then you are participating in censorship.

Things also go the opposite way, with legitimate moderation attacked as being censorship.

The prime example of this is the banning of prominent right-wing Twitter accounts like @realDonaldTrump, Ali Alexander, Gavin McInnes, Steve Bannon, Milo Yiannopoulos, Laura Loomer, Mike Lindell, Alex Jones, and so on.

Those listed above promote uniquely bad agendas. Promoting a violent uprising with unsubstantiated claims of election fraud is a prime example. Trump has had two years to respond to critics, to substantiate his claims, but his recent 14 page letter only cited debunked claims (most of which I’ve fact-checked).

Surprisingly, Twitter wants to be involved in violent uprisings — but only when they are substantiated. Such was the case during the Arab Spring and the recent corrupt Belorussia election. Twitter was involved in helping spread discontent with those corrupt elections.

But Twitter has good reasons to not want to be involved in violent revolutions when they are based upon conspiracy-theories and misinformation, such as is the case in the United States. Twitter moderating unsubstantiated claims of election fraud is an editorial policy that’s in their best interests.

As for hate-speech, it’s a simple matter that anti “white male” tweets won’t make white males leave the platform, but Milo Yiannopoulos’s campaign against a “black female” would cause black women to leave the platform if allowed to continue. It’s not weepy “wokeness” that’s the issue issue, but heartless bean counters who care about its effect on the Daily Active Users (DAU) metrics. Moderation is about what’s best for the platform, and what’s best is that tweets like “black people suck” will get moderated more than “white people suck”.

The point of this post is to highlight the difference between “moderation” and “censorship”. People on both sides are confusing the two, often deliberately. Those on the left claim some cases of Twitter censorship have been legitimate moderation instead, which private platforms are allowed to do. Those on the right claim that some of their legitimately moderated content was “censored”. Both of these examples are wrong.

Twitter is (or more precisely, Twitter employees are) indeed guilty of some left-wing biased censorship, that they’ve tried to excuse as moderation. But at the same time, most of what the right-wing claims as censorship has indeed just been moderation.