The Pillow Dude's 'Free Speech' Social Media Website Will Moderate 'Swear Words' Because Of Course It Will
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210414/15593446615/pillow-dudes-free-speech-social-media-website-will-moderate-swear-words-because-course-it-will.shtml
It seems like every few months a new social media app comes on the scene, promising to be the "free speech" social media app that says it won't "censor" (by which they mean moderate) anything. And those of us who have been in this space for more than two seconds laugh. Because every single internet service that allows third party speech sooner or later realizes that moderation is not optional -- it's necessary to keep any site running. At a basic level, it starts with spam. Leaving up spam makes a site unusable. After that, there are things that you are legally required to remove, including child sexual abuse material and (in some cases) copyright infringing material.
Sooner or later, though, every such site realizes that it has to go through the content moderation learning curve. That doesn't mean they all need to follow the same rules or do the same thing, but they do need to recognize that content moderation questions are always there. This includes things like "how do you deal with abuse and harassment" and just generally how do you deal with trolls who are clearly up to no good. There are many different approaches to this, but insisting that you're the "free speech" site that will "do nothing" is not a realistic statement. It's one that demonstrates ignorance.