> If you look at every attempt to create "The Uncensored Free Speech Version Of [ANY_SERVICE]," they all, inevitably turned into a 4chan-like trashfire. You've got to have some kind of moderation.
Let's distinguish two things here.
One is, you have ten thousand groups and they each have local moderators. If you're a gigantic tool, you get banned from 90% of groups you join and the other 10% are a trash fire. But this primarily happens on the basis of temperament rather than ideology. Most groups don't ban you for expressing a minority viewpoint, they ban you for being a jerk or a spammer, and the ones that do ban you for expressing a minority viewpoint are the ones that become a radicalized trash fire with a reputation for abusive moderation and decline in popularity. Also, you don't have to care much about them because there are plenty of other groups that don't ban you for engaging in civil debate, most people are members of many independent groups, and there are consequently plenty of well-trafficked places for civil debate to take place.
The other is, the platform itself does the moderation and there is nowhere to go to escape their errors without losing the massive network effect of the consolidated platform. The platform at large becomes a radicalized trash fire but the network effect keeps people from abandoning it, so the platform not only loses the incentive to stop that from happening, it becomes a target for capture by authoritarians who want to censor their opponents.
Let's distinguish two things here.
One is, you have ten thousand groups and they each have local moderators. If you're a gigantic tool, you get banned from 90% of groups you join and the other 10% are a trash fire. But this primarily happens on the basis of temperament rather than ideology. Most groups don't ban you for expressing a minority viewpoint, they ban you for being a jerk or a spammer, and the ones that do ban you for expressing a minority viewpoint are the ones that become a radicalized trash fire with a reputation for abusive moderation and decline in popularity. Also, you don't have to care much about them because there are plenty of other groups that don't ban you for engaging in civil debate, most people are members of many independent groups, and there are consequently plenty of well-trafficked places for civil debate to take place.
The other is, the platform itself does the moderation and there is nowhere to go to escape their errors without losing the massive network effect of the consolidated platform. The platform at large becomes a radicalized trash fire but the network effect keeps people from abandoning it, so the platform not only loses the incentive to stop that from happening, it becomes a target for capture by authoritarians who want to censor their opponents.
One of these things is not like the other.