It seems like he's arguing that people claiming moderation is censoring them are wrong, because moderation of large platforms is dispassionate and focused on limiting behavior no one likes, rather than specific topics.
I have no problem believing this is true for the vast majority of moderation decisions. But I think the argument fails because it only takes a few exceptions or a little bit of bias in this process to have a large effect.
On a huge platform it can simultaneously be true that platform moderation is almost always focused on behavior instead of content, and a subset of people and topics are being censored.
> On a huge platform it can simultaneously be true that platform moderation is almost always focused on behavior instead of content, and a subset of people and topics are being censored.
He made this exact point in a previous post. Some topics look like they're being censored only because they tend to attract such a high concentration of bad actors who simultaneously engage in bullying type behavior. They get kicked off for that behavior and it looks like topic $X is being censored when it mostly isn't.
That's not the same point. Again, I have no problem believing that what you say happens, even often. Even still, some topics may really be censored. They may even be the same topics; just because there's an angry mob on one side of a topic doesn't mean that everyone on that side of the topic is wrong, and that's the hardest situation to moderate dispassionately. Maybe even impossible. Which is when I can imagine platforms getting frustrated and resorting to topic censorship.
Could also be that some objectionable behavior patterns are much more common in some ideological groups than others, which makes it appear as if the moderation is biased against them. It is, just not in the way they think.
I have no problem believing this is true for the vast majority of moderation decisions. But I think the argument fails because it only takes a few exceptions or a little bit of bias in this process to have a large effect.
On a huge platform it can simultaneously be true that platform moderation is almost always focused on behavior instead of content, and a subset of people and topics are being censored.