We need more than deplatforming

> "amplify factual voices over disinformation."

First, to be clear, that's not censorship, and it is entirely compatible with freedom of speech because it is not proposing to prevent speech, only to direct emphasis. Freedom of speech means you are free to speak and people who choose to listen are free to listen, not that you get equal airtime.

Second, we already have amplification taking place of non-factual voices. It's not like we can just not amplify once kind of voice systematically over another, because anything we do results in that, including doing nothing. It's just inevitable.

A well-intentioned free-for-all in communications leads immediately to the uneven amplifications we see now. There is increasingly justified concern that it is becoming dangerously unfactual lately, perhaps due to an interaction between human instincts and rapid changes in information technology, leading to a breakdown of society and democracy, thus the suggestion to promote factual voices.

> Who gets to decide which is which?

Something inevitably decides.

If by that question you are providing the implicit answer "nobody should", then you are favouring the current system of biased amplification, where things like outrage culture, economic incentives promoting polarisation, and widespread avoidance of good-faith reasoning about basic concepts is looking rather evident.

So we already have a system deciding which is which, even if we don't want one. It is impossible to avoid having one, even in principle. Let's acknowledge that hard reality, and discuss how to make a better system than the de facto one that emerges otherwise.

I don't know the answer of how we decide, but I think it is worthwhile to investigate the question in more detail than dismissing it outright, given what we see at the moment.

I suggest ways to determine facts and factual voices could echo systems that have been developed over thousands of years for this. We have a long history of developed legal, justice, political, journalistic, academic and scientific systems with a variety of methods for finding (or deciding upon) facts, to cope with the problem when people dispute about what is true and false.

This has been litigated many times. That’s still better than polluting the agora, as Reddit found when banning r/fatpeoplehate and others.

As you can see from replies, people do not agree on the meaning of "fact". To be fair this is because the word is used to mean different things, not just objective truths, even in formal contexts.

Unfortunately because people don't hold the same idea about what the word "fact" means, and some don't believe in the concept of objective reality at all, one person can talk of "fact-checking website" and be thinking of only objective facts, while another person hears that as "prevailing-opinion-promoting website" to be used for non-objective facts.

"Objective truth checking website" would be better. The intent is unambiguous at least. 1+1=2, pi is definitely irrational, and the Earth is not flat.

Unfortunately when it comes to things like "evidence of widespread electoral fraud sufficient to overturn the result", that doesn't apply perfectly. That type of fact cannot be known absolutely; there's always that bit of wiggle room of possibility which feeds conspiracy theories, especially in a population distressed about many issues and distrustful of institutions and each other.

Such things can however be known beyond reasonable doubt to the man on the Clapham omnibus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_on_the_Clapham_omnibus).

If an opinion doesn't spread because people decide not to spread it after transparency reveals who is paying for advertisements and how platform algorithms are deciding which opinions to promote, isn't that just better democracy?

The Mozilla blog entry, subtext and all, does not say that they should decide what opinions are unwanted.

You originally said this "some great ideas to fix the internet without overt censorship".

This statement is false. That was my point. Mozilla explicitily was supporting censorship. So, therefore it is not "without censorship".

It seems like you are walking your original statement back though, and instead simply saying that you personally support censorship.

So great. Glad that you agree that your original statement was false, and that Mozilla is actually supporting deplatforming.