Welp, I was hoping that the last post would be my last word on blocklists. However, there’ve been a couple relevant and interesting bits to share. First off, notorious libertarian legal snarkmeister Popehat has given his opinion about Why Mean Blockbots Probably Aren’t Defamatory. He does close with a couple of caveats.
I speak here of the rule of law, not the rule of feels. I understand many people feel as though BlockBot designations are defamatory. So they have that going for them, which is nice.
Meanwhile, the team that did The Block Bot (this is the Athiesm+ blockbot, not Randi’s GG blockbot) announced that Blockbot will undergo a significant rewrite, to help it deal with it’s unexpected popularity.
In this developmental stage, the following features for this new platform are being discussed:
- Facilitating the formation of more than one blocking team.
- Allowing users to opt-in or opt-out of individual blocker’s blocks.
- Creating clear policies for adding and removing blockers and admins.
- Handling appeals more consistently.
- Expanding users’ block-list choices.
- Soliciting feedback from users more effectively.
- Providing a more robust system for users to suggest blocks.
Meanwhile, Richard Dawkins (who is on the Atheism+ blocklist because, well, he’s been Richard Dawkins on twitter lately) is not impressed.
Technically, Popehat is a collective. It would be more accurate to say “notorious libertarian legal snarkmeister Ken at Popehat”
I think block lists and the “right to a platform” stuff can be a “gray area” from a civil libertarian perspective. Yes, people have a right to decide what they pay attention to, but stuff can become problematic if influential groups other than the government effectively deny someone any platform to speak. That can include stuff like banning certain political views on a site and harassing people or derailing a debate by asking questions in bad faith. If someone makes an argument in good faith, though, you can usually learn something from it even if his or her conclusions are wrong.
Is it necessarily civil libertarian to believe that moderation is bad?
Not really. It depends on the context. GamerGaters are the ones who are mostly responsible for derailing the debate and preventing people from speaking. Many sites have bent over backwards making sure they’re not denied a platform, even though most of their stuff is at least borderline harassment.
I think I misread your comment the first time. Many extremists claim to be against all moderation when it suits them, but that’s not because they actually value freedom of speech.
I tend to think that all -isms about debates on the Internet, at least among strangers that aren’t using their real names, is not constructive, mainly because I don’t want to assume conviction when there is none. Trolling, busybodying and gossip are too often passing for actual belief.