Lets Discuss Moderation, Misinformation, Censorship and Freedom of Speech

  Blender Dumbass
December 14, 2024

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If you are going to skim, better listen to it instead.

Based on a widely understood ideals of Freedom a derivation is possible that claims that any sound or gesture or form of expression, which in itself does not constitute Power is in fact as generally righteous as any other Freedom. People are free to speak not because it is useful, but because they are free to make sounds with their mouths. People are free to write not because it is useful, but because they are free to move their hands around, or use tools, some of which make lines on pieces of paper.

The "which in itself does not constitute Power" bit, though, claims that there are situations in which freedom could be weaponized as a tool for those seeking to restrict freedom itself. From threats to manipulation and coercion, ambitious power-gatherers use freedom of speech as a tool to make people do things they do not want to do. Which warrants a rightful reaction to such uses of this freedom. Moderation on websites is, or at least should be, a tool to restrict such acts. Yet a lot of us are rightfully seeing in this trend of censorship nothing but a slippery slope, which could only lead into one thing and one thing only: a gradual descent into thought police.

As I discussed many times, I am not in favor of re-experiencing the trauma I got from The House That Jack Built, a torturous exploration into the psychology of serial killers from Danish madman Lars Von Trier. I've seen it enough times, that is - ones, to understand that I do not want to see it again. The absolute Adrenalin-filled Norepineuphoria mixed with generally insane level of existential fear, that this film made me go though, was enough to make me avoid such films ones and for all. Yet I would disagree with anybody who thinks that those kinds of films should be banned. Simply because the subject matter is grim to the bones, does not mean that the discussion should not take place. Contrary, films like these should be experienced by more people. Those explorations into ones uncomfortable selves should be encouraged. Norepineuphoria should be defeated. Yet it seems like most "moderation" is aimed at irradiating anything approaching this of level of intensity, for a sole benefit at avoiding uncomfortablity.

In my last deep dive into my discontent with the state of censorship online, I discussed strategies at avoiding moderation, by using carefully chosen euphemisms, to convey uncomfortable ideas in a more round about way. It was prompted by a rather insidious assertion that some ideas in one of my articles were to suggest a possibility that I endorse a kind of generally perceived evil.

In fact the article that was removed by the moderators of Mastodon, was exposing a rather apocalyptic reality of modern age-discrimination. The fact that a lot of those ambitious for power people are parents scares me to my bones. And yet we let those people enslave and control those they perceive to be "their" children. And any rebellious expression of autonomy from those kids, is perceived automatically as a sign of something being wrong. A sign of some kind of malfunction in the child.

Me exposing those evils, trying to make a stop to them, trying to liberate a whole demographic full of innocent people who are being taken constant advantage of, was perceived in the same light as advocacy for abuse, insidious enough, to be promptly thrown into the bin of shame.

Probably one of those power hungry parents was not happy about the way I was paving a way for the irradiation of per's power, enough to press the damn report button. And then moderators who are also probably power seeking child abusers themselves, saw this attempt of mine and decided themselves to put a stop to it. Or at least I want to think this way. It would be a nice story to tell.

In reality though, most likely, somebody just skimmed my article without reading into the context and felt uncomfortable at my discussing of grim topics, which prompted per to report me, and all just due to a simple surge of damned Norepineuphoria. Norepineuphoria that was probably shared with the moderator, who pressed the delete button not because of a genuine attempt at stopping some truly bad things, but because of a damned gut feeling that was just too hard to bare.

I see value in spam filters and scam auto-removers. Those generally stop bad things from happening to people. And moderators are right, to some extend, to remove links to financial fraud mafias or websites infiltrated with malware. Or at least mark them with enough warning messages to scare off the simple-folk from accessing them by mistake.

But lately moderators are being tasked with not just malicious link-removal, but also removal of information that they themselves perceive not factual enough. The war on "misinformation" or "disinformation" or whatever you want to call it, is a war on fiction, satire and parody. It is a war on uninformed idiots, who would benefit exposure to be corrected in the comment section. But no, the damn Norepineuphoria is too strong to allow for their bogus ideas to surface. And therefor those idiots never get their feedback. They keep believing their flawed ideas and because we fight with them so hard, they become desperate, desperate enough to form whole movements and desperate to never talk to us again, because they believe that we formed a conspiracy to irradiate them. They end up forming the us-versus-them mentality.

The ironic side to all of this is that those uninformed idiots call our ideas "misinformation" and us "uninformed idiots". And now the question becomes: who really are the uninformed idiots? We are or they are?

Fighting misinformation with law also will not yield any good results. Countries tried it with advertising, prompting advertisers to add phrases such as "just an illustration" or something along those lines, so as to lie the same lies that they were always lying but without technically lying, or in cases where they do try their best to tell the truth, to avoid possible mistakes that could creep into their presentations.

Scientists often talk in a very round about ways because accuracy of their observations are crucial to their reputation. And therefor they would always use uncertain language to describe even the most certain of things. Thus avoiding possible claims of their work being some sort of misinformation.

Fighting misinformation, or using heavy moderation doesn't stop bad ideas from spreading. It only encourages people to use more round about ways to communicate.

As a political activist I have to constantly think about every sentence I write and every idea I discuss and weigh it's Norepineuphoric effects and the certaintiness of it, as to not, by mistake, trigger that or this response that will promptly shut me down.

A lot of people choose to resort to simple tactics of never actually claiming anything concrete. They would be just asking questions or something, and never have anything to answer. Some even perceive it as a virtue. Terry Gilliam famously criticized Spielberg for giving people answers in his movies. Many "open for interpretation" artworks perceived to be of more value than those that have to say something concrete. Those are all expressions of the same existential fear of losing the ability to claim things, however bogus they might be.

Claiming things is our way to start conversations. Claiming things is our way to learn. When a small child claims a bogus thing, we don't report his misinformation to the thought police, but rather we correct him. Sometimes we correct him with our own misinformation. And that is why we should be able to make our own mind, make our own research, see the world ourselves. No matter how old or young we are.

Free Speech is even more important when it comes to developing minds. Many laws today try to guard young people from this or that potentially dangerous idea. Many websites that distribute bogus content have to do age verification on people, which is deeply disturbing for many other reasons. But is also disturbing because kids will not have a chance to see and discuss ideas that are truly important when it matters the most.

The human brain starts its journey as freshly opened blob of clay, slowly solidifying into an immovable porcelain by the old age. You can observe this by giving a granny and a child a mobile phone, and record how quickly they will figure out how to use it. Due to this neuro-plasticity kids have the best chance, biologically speaking, to dissect and understand complex ideas, yet we make them wait, distracting them with useless noise, until their brains are half way dry, to only then let them finally start to be exposed to things that truly matter.

I wonder how much better the world would be if kids would be exposed to everything from as young of an age as possible. So they would navigate through the absurd political landscapes. So they could not be easily manipulated by fraud seeking websites. So they would not believe that porn is depicting real relationships.

To truly fight misinformation we should expose ourselves to it so much that we would develop a lie detector. And the best way to do it is not when we are pre-heating the oven for the dishes, but rather when we are still sculpting them. To expose youngsters to all the absurdity in the world and then to encourage them to make sense of it, to find truth lost in the noise of the memes, is to help the world. And for this we need Freedom to Speak, Freedom to Listen and Freedom to Discuss.

Happy Hacking!!!

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