ShellMonkey

Right, which is really where the whole thing started with, that the platforms and associated providers should be neutral, but someone had to have the capacity to make a determination of acceptable vs not. To call all censorship bad would say we shouldn’t stop anything even those things we universally (aside from the deranged fringe) consider bad.

Law isn’t flawless, nor is mass consensus always right, nor the dictates of an individual. Stripping everything to the lowest common only makes the most reserved part of the population happy and harms everyone else.

I just got confused why that got such a bad reaction.

Yes, the part preceded by the word EDIT: was a question. Whatever, have fun

I had no question in the original post, making no mention of the edit after.

I didn’t expect it to simply be the end all statement, but a number of down votes without explanation prompted me to inquire on why.

What seems to sum up the argument though is that censorship is always bad, unless it’s the sort that you and the majority of society agree with. My suggestion originally was that indeed some is required, to maintain civil society, but who decides it is hard to say.

But your original question was why doesn’t somebody just decide what’s bad for society?

My original post wasn’t a question at all, it was a statement that somebody does need to have the capacity to enforce acceptable behavior, but defining it and deciding who that falls to is difficult.

I’m saying there is a whole list of things between, but I suppose that might not be obvious if you’re looking for someone to be mad at.

Someone is going to want things that society has agreed are unacceptable, if not then we wouldn’t need to bother making rules to prohibit them. To those people you, or the law, or the platform owner are the censor. Is it still bad then or is there some place where a watcher is valid then?

Which is why I say it’s difficult but necessary at some point. As a thought experiment, take a list of things in a topic, in this case it was brought in as porn things because apparently the credit companies are prudish. Array out that list going from mundane safe hetro sex all the way to snuff films. Somewhere in there any given person would find ‘their’ line and perhaps a separate ‘the’ line which they see as acceptable to film and diseminate.

So who orders the list, who draws the line, and by who/how does it get enforced? To say all censorship is bad would imply that no line should be drawn. One can’t just say it should be based on ‘common sense’ because I guarantee there are people who would think what’s sensible to you is either too outlandish or tame out there.

These things are tricky, I would generally like to say the platforms and associated processors, hosting, etc should be neutral. However, there are plenty of things that are just plain bad for society if they get created which despite being massively unpopular might get enough niche support to be brought to existence given the chance.

It could be by law, decree of the platform, or vote of the users, but somebody has to have the ability to draw a line on what can be done in public, the broader consensus on the question the better though.

Edit: Curiosity since this seems to have irritated some people. Would you suggest that a platform not be regulated in some way if it where enabling the creation of exploitive and hateful content? Note that I didn’t specify sexual content but rather things that can be bad for society.