Thank you for examples of your personal experience with online moderation. They do give me a better sense of the pitfalls and challenges of unbridled online free speech.

That said, I continue to believe that the free market place of ideas ultimately allow voices to be distributed and heard in the most efficient and productive way, even if the road gets bumpy and uncomfortable along the way.

If a forum begins to attract a rowdy crowd, then sensible people can either ignore those voices and restrict their dialogue to the like-minded. We are under no obligation to engage with anyone, and I’ve ignored more than my fair share of fools. If it reaches a point we can no longer tolerate, then we can take our voice elsewhere. The internet is nearly as vast as the reaches of space.

Medium might not be a pleasant place if 75% of the writers were right-wing extremists, but as it stands 98% of Medium’s contributors are shameless, rabid Social Justice Fundamentalists. Is that any better?

I question whether Medium would be overrun by MAGA-types if it relaxed to less-than-Mao standards. There is more than sufficient Leftist presence here to push back. At best, it would make the content SO much less one dimensional, predictable and masturbatory. At worst, things might get a little spicy.

I’m not arguing for no moderation; I think it would be appropriate to adhere to First Amendment standards, i.e. no threats of violence, libel, or hate speech. My problem is that Medium’s standards for all of these vary depending upon the political slant of the content. If I had argued for excluding white people from anything, yelling expletives at MAGA protesters if they pass them on the street, or openly calling for Trump’s assassination, you and I both know that Medium would have done nothing.

Selective moderation is so much worse than no moderation at all.