Against Moderation

The people who run almost every platform that has user-generated content of any kind share an assumption that it's necessary to have moderators who remove content deemed "inappropriate." This assumption is mostly wrong. "Moderation" is a gateway to censorship, and is always abused by those in power. I've seen this many times in many communities, and I've been both the victim and (forcefully) the perpetrator.

Power imbalances are never good for interpersonal relationships; they always breed contempt over disagreements, since in any disagreement that gets heated, there's the implied threat of moderator intervention, forcing people to constantly walk on egg shells.

Once the action is taken, drama is instantly and drastically increased; the censored person will become very hostile to the moderator who took action and will hold contempt towards the platform in general. In addition, anyone who liked the censored content (or just thought censorship was an overreaction) will also be offended, especially if that person is an important figure in the community.

What I propose in this writing is to completely abolish centralized moderation authorities. If someone's persistently being retarded (spamming, insulting, sharing illegal content, etc.), people should selectively block/mute them until no one wants to engage. It isn't as instant a consequence as censorship, but that's not a bad thing; it can allow for more granular consequences rather than a moderator having to decide whether to delete something or not.

Blocking/muting is also not as time-costly as moderation because there's no issues with reviews or appeals or accusations of unfairness; each person just makes the decision for themselves. This saves a lot of human resources wasted on trivial things.

In the case where blocking/muting people gets unbearable or messy, they can optionally assign automated (i.e., keyword filters) or manual (i.e., "censorship") moderation authorities, but it all remains in the hands of the users; each user could choose their own moderation policy, and they selectively choose what to mute with the possibility to revert their choices at their own discretion, anarchically. This solution could even show how many people or moderation authorities have muted a user, for informative purposes.