alt Hacker News"Censorship" vs "Content moderation". You can't have online discussions without moderation, and that makes moderation some form of censorship. Thus you can't have online discussions without some form of censorship. Only difference is who is doing the censoring.
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Of course you can have online discussion without moderation. In the most basic form: you publish on your site, I respond on mine. No moderator involved
And there are plenty of other differences besides "who", for example, "how".
> Only difference is who is doing the censoring.
It's a universe-sized difference though. If a platform owner is doing it you can somply go to another platform. If a democratically elected goverment is doing it you can change the government though it's much harder. Or at least you can soothe yourself that it's being done for the benefit if the people as "the people" sees it. And if an authoritarian government is doing it, you are screwed.
Even we accept your premise that moderation is _some_ form of censorship, it still holds that we may not want _other_ or _all_ forms of censorship.
The last sentence of your comment, therefore, is manipulative. It's like saying "ice is a form of water, so you can't have drinks without water, and the only difference is who waters down your bourbon".
> makes moderation some form of censorship
Censorship is when Mallory decides that Alice is not permitted to talk to Bob.
Moderation is when Bob does not want to hear from Alice and Mallory blocks her for him.
The difference is on who's behalf the blocking is being done.
as long as it's not the government who is doing the censorship / content moderation then I'm OK
since the government is too powerful and can enforce its ideas with legal violence
Read the post. It's about government censorship, not content moderation.
The difference between censorship and moderation is the ability to realistically opt-out. Your friends might get mad at your for saying something, but you can choose your friends. Your community might not allow certain speech, but you generally get to choose the communities you are a part of. When the avenues where 99% of all communication go through "moderate" speech a certain way, that starts being censorship.
The difference is somewhat part who is doing the moderating, but it is far more important the ability to opt-out without significant negative impact.