Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

One size does not fit all.

Some people want to escape the filter bubble, to expose their ideas to criticism, to strengthen their thinking and arguments through conflict.

Other people want a community of like-minded people to share and improve ideas and actions collectively, without trolls burning everything down all the time.

Some people want each of those types of community depending on the topic and depending on their mood at the time.

A better platform would let each community decide, and make it easy to fork off new communities with different rules when a subgroup or individual decides the existing rules aren't working for them.

To add another perspective (albeit with politics rather than climate change):

I worked in political communications for a while. Part of the reason it was so toxic to my mental health and I burnt out was that it was nearly impossible to avoid politics online even in completely unrelated spaces. So I'd work 40 hours trying to improve the situation, log in to discuss stupid media/fan shit, and have to wade through a bunch of stuff that reminded me how little difference I was making, stuff assuming I wasn't involved/listening, etc. It was INFURIATING. Yes, I had the option to not go online, but I'm a nerd living in a small city. There isn't enough people here that share my interests to go completely offline.

Staying on topic helps people who are already involved in important causes to step away and preserve their mental health, which in turn makes them more effective.

Fortunately it's not a strawman. From the article:

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Moderating spam is very interesting: it is almost universally regarded as okay to ban (i.e. CENSORSHIP) but spam is in no way illegal.

Spam actually passes the test of “allow any legal speech” with flying colors. Hell, the US Postal Service delivers spam to your mailbox. When 1A discussions talk about free speech on private platforms mirroring free speech laws, the exceptions cited are typically “fire in a crowded theater” or maybe “threatening imminent bodily harm.” Spam is nothing close to either of those, yet everyone agrees: yes, itʻs okay to moderate (censor) spam.

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He's saying directly that censoring spam is not supported by any free speech principle, at least as he sees it, and in fact our free speech laws allow spam. He also refers to the idea of "allow any legal speech" as the "free-speech"-based litmus test for content moderation, and chooses spam to show how this litmus test is insufficient.

What about my framing of his argument is a strawman? it looks like a flesh-and-blood man! I am saying that his litmus test is an invalid or inaccurate framing, of what a platform that supports free speech should be about. Even if the government is supposed to allow you to say pretty close to whatever you want whenever you want, it's never been an expectation that private citizens have to provide the same support. Individuals, institutions, and organizations have always limited speech beyond what the government could enforce. Therefore, "free speech" has never meant that you could say whatever is legal and everyone else will just go along with it.

On the other hand, Elon Musk's simple remark of saying that he knows he's doing a good job if both political extremes are equally offended shows to me that he seems to understand free speech in practice better than this ex-Reddit CEO does! (https://www.quora.com/Elon-Musk-A-social-media-platform-s-po...)

Right, it exists with the tacit purpose of brigading other subs. But like Kiwifarms, blurbs in the site rules mean nothing given the context of the community.

That's because they were small and often has strict rules (written or not), aka moderation, about how to behave. You don't remember massive problems because the bad actors were kicked off. It falls apart at scale and when everyone can't/won't agree on "good behavior" or "the rules" is/are.