Eh, it happens!

But anyway, a couple of things. Firstly and foremostly:

“You have yet to convince me, and I’m sure others on this site would agree, that moderating speech on a single platform is tantamount to robbing someone of their right to express that speech everywhere else.”

I know I’m not going to convince you on that point because that isn’t the point I am trying to make.

Please understand that when I say something is censorship it doesn’t mean all censorship is equivalent. That’s (well, more or less — I would expect you would concede gradations in severity, at least) your opinion, as applied to what you believe censorship is.

What am saying is that it is the same root action, regardless of scope. One person, being prevented from speaking, in one place, one time, is still being prevented from speaking, yes?

You could call this flurgle, if you want, instead of censorship. But if so, then moderation and censorship, as you consider it, would both be acts of flurgling.

And since your idea of censorship before you stick in all your carveouts is precisely aligned with flurgling, it raises the question of why bother with those exceptions in the first place.

Why not judge acts of flurgling on their merits, as you say you do for things like fraud?

Or, for another potentially interesting angle, there’re laws that require certain language on signs, in particular the minimization or elimination of English. There is, of course, a simple and straightforward alternative: Use the mandated language.

I suspect you would agree that this is censorship on the face of it — it in fact required specific use of S.27 to avoid constitutional challenge because the people passing it knew it would not survive a lawsuit otherwise — but on the other hand, you keep saying that if there’s an alternative space or means, it can’t be censorship. How would you resolve this kind of contradiction?

“Two things.

Losing an audience is not the same thing as having your right to speak chilled. An audience is a privilege, not a right, and no one is entitled to have anyone listen to them⁠—just look at the Dilbert guy as an example.
Being afraid of the social consequences of your speech does not impede your actual right to say things. Plenty of people have said shit that supposedly got them “cancelled” and that didn’t rob them of their rights⁠—again, I refer you to the Dilbert guy."

You are (well, mostly) correct here, but you’re aiming at the wrong target. Censorship is possible without impeding someone’s civil rights, both through redefining what civil rights even are (for example there is a reason the U.S.’s First Amendment is an amendment, and also why you have Brandenburg and not Schneck), and through actions that do not violate them even without that redefinition.

Consider: There is no civil right that protects you from a heckler’s veto, is there? The U.S. First Amendment only says that the U.S. government apparatus can’t pass a law censoring you (but because as fully applied that would be incredibly stupid there are nevertheless exceptions to the first that are not supported by the plain text of it).

“Moderation only ever affects “one specific community” or space. If the GameFAQs forums decide to ban a specific kind of speech, that decision doesn’t affect 4chan’s /v/ or ResetEra or Reddit gaming subreddits.”

Sure. So what? Doesn’t mean it isn’t shutting speech down in those places, does it? So it’s an act of flurgle, yes? And that most people may be able to go elsewhere doesn’t matter, especially if you apply the same standard of ‘but if one person can’t speak now, that’s unacceptable’ that you’ve set down for other kinds of flurgling.

(side note: what about Reddit setting policies for all of Reddit? Do we consider each subreddit its own community for the purpose of this analysis? Or do we say ‘no that’s all one community’, and then if so what stops you from extending that definition of ‘community’ up to an arbitrarily large group of people and then saying ‘well, this only affects Canadians, so it’s just moderation, oh well’?

Like, Visa and Mastercard and Google and such absolutely can and do impose standards on websites, or else they will not do business with them, and some of those standards are in fact specifically about what can and cannot be said on them.

Have these decisions ever stopped anyone from talking about the things those standards prohibit? Of course they have. So, by the standard you supplied, these acts must be censorious. They’re certainly acts of flurgle.

Like, you say this:

“Only one person could be directly affected and it would still be an act of censorship”

And all I’m asking is that you apply that judgement consistently, and see what conclusion it leads you to.

“(I)f we are to oppose censorship, we must oppose it even in those cases.”

Remember, not all acts of censorship are created equal, something you’ve agreed to when considering the current exceptions to free speech rights.

You said, I remind you, that they’re both censorship by your own definition, but also okay because it’s for the good of the general public.

If you consider some acts of censorship to be justified, I think it’s fair to think you don’t oppose them, yeah? I don’t think many people’re marching on Parliament Hill to demand liberation from Thou Shalt Not Lie About Your Ingredients laws. Although maybe some of those idiot truckers might, I dunno. Fuck those people.

And so it does not follow that if one opposes some censorship, as you do, you must oppose all censorship, as you do not, and as I don’t either. Or you can think of it as not opposing all acts of flurgle, if you prefer.

It is a good idea to be skeptical of any act of flurgle. Having a broad definition means you are skeptical of more things and therefore are less likely to accept them on grounds of growing up with them, ‘that’s just how things are around here’ sorts of judgements.

Sometimes, though, the conclusion that you come to is “okay, this kind of flurgle benefits enough people to be worth the impingement on speech”.

That’s generally where moderation sits: The consequences are (usually) fairly low, the means used to achieve it are non-invasive, it’s tied to property rights, etc, and often though not always the goals of moderation are to prevent harm to other users. So they’re acts of flurgle that are acceptable. Other ones can include things like mandated warning labels, or safety briefs on aircraft, or the disclaimers that play over a bunch of happy people playing in a park that end “ask your doctor about Gropplefaxiline” and so on.

(Or even copyright, though that is probably not going to win me friends hereabouts.)

Something like s.319 is a much more difficult question, because on the one hand it is aimed squarely at a very, very narrow, and very, very harmful, slice of speech; but, on the other, it is also exercising the government’s monopoly of force to stop it, for which reason the question of whether issuing a $5,000 fine for teaching kids “the Holocaust was just and the Talmud laid out plans for Jewish world domination” was constitutional went clear to the Supreme Court and resulted in a split decision on literally the grounds of benefit-to-the-public you outlined as an acceptable reason for other speech restrictions. The question of whether a given act of censoring is justified is not one that necessarily has an obvious answer, because saying that it can never be justified leads to, if not absurdities, results that are so severely negative that people have zero desire to go there. Contrariwise, there’s lots and lots of examples of acts of censorship themselves being extraordinarily harmful, which is the whole reason free speech rights are guaranteed in writing in places today.

But censorship of itself is a tool. The moral weight flows what happens when you use it. I personally think that stopping someone from speaking is to be avoided, because I value it, but there are times when, for example, doing so impedes or chills the speech of far too many others to allow it to stand, because I value that speech more.

Note that this is the same contention Mr. Masnick makes in support of moderation as well: That one hateful person can chill the speech of others, and so by removing them, you’re actually increasing the freedom of speech in general. This is a proposition I suspect you agree with, because, like, it’s true, but note that it makes a critical point here:

You can chill speech without having power over someone, and you can do so without actually ever directly impacting their physical ability communicate or their civil rights. It is an entirely psychological phenomenon, but it still happens. It’s very similar to a heckler’s veto, in concept.

The same fully applies to moderation, and in particular, hateful moderation. It absolutely can chill speech and, speaking from direct personal experience, it can do so in more than one ‘community’ at once. I have seen way too many times when people have demanded I take action on something based on the practices of a different site entirely — both in demanding removal or protesting the same. As a fellow moderator, you’re probably also familiar with people angrily claiming that removing their stupidities breaches their rights under the First.

(This isn’t even an issue limited to internet spaces where people flow relatively freely from one space to the next. You get fun times at customs with American gun-owners trying to argue about their rights!)