Name: Anonymous 2018-07-23 12:37
Most large web sites are supported by either advertising or donators. These entities have weight in decisions and their withdrawal can cripple a site.
So instead of allowing free speech and place to discuss anything on the fringe, websites opt to censor anything questionable and things that might reduce advertising/donations/subscription.
This has the unintended consequence of shaping "forbidden" speech into more acceptable forms, sneaking bits of "forbidden" ideas into mainstream.
This shifts the overton window towards the "censored" topics acceptance and adds more attention to them.
A taboo existence is first highlighted then ridiculed. After awhile it becomes acceptable to oppose its existence on fringe grounds but controversy is reduced.
Then an idea forms that contradicts mainstream view but isn't too controversial to ban or censor. Its a middle-ground idea that only shifts dialogue towards the background(laws,rules, censorship,meta content) and legitimizes further discussion, which censorship cannot tolerate, while at this point community accepts the idea at least partially, making the mods to choose the loyalty to their community or loyalty to self-imposed rules.
Community begins to break down into parts which accepts news ideas and resist censorship and old guard who support the mods. Spin-off communities form outside of mod control and people migrate there for good.
The original community either clams up and doubles down on enforcing censorship or tries to have a dialogue to compromise between free speech and censorship in vain hope they'll regain control of people leaving.
What it highlights is that rules and forms of these groups are the shell, the real people inside and their opinions are what matters.
Thats why smaller sites are critical to free speech and freedom of thought: they simply have more influence from users than advertisers or donators.
So instead of allowing free speech and place to discuss anything on the fringe, websites opt to censor anything questionable and things that might reduce advertising/donations/subscription.
This has the unintended consequence of shaping "forbidden" speech into more acceptable forms, sneaking bits of "forbidden" ideas into mainstream.
This shifts the overton window towards the "censored" topics acceptance and adds more attention to them.
A taboo existence is first highlighted then ridiculed. After awhile it becomes acceptable to oppose its existence on fringe grounds but controversy is reduced.
Then an idea forms that contradicts mainstream view but isn't too controversial to ban or censor. Its a middle-ground idea that only shifts dialogue towards the background(laws,rules, censorship,meta content) and legitimizes further discussion, which censorship cannot tolerate, while at this point community accepts the idea at least partially, making the mods to choose the loyalty to their community or loyalty to self-imposed rules.
Community begins to break down into parts which accepts news ideas and resist censorship and old guard who support the mods. Spin-off communities form outside of mod control and people migrate there for good.
The original community either clams up and doubles down on enforcing censorship or tries to have a dialogue to compromise between free speech and censorship in vain hope they'll regain control of people leaving.
What it highlights is that rules and forms of these groups are the shell, the real people inside and their opinions are what matters.
Thats why smaller sites are critical to free speech and freedom of thought: they simply have more influence from users than advertisers or donators.