The Epstein case has a lot of evidence supporting a conspiracy, and I certainly think there is more to it than we know. But in recent days I’ve seen upvoted comments about (a) the NYC shooter not actually targeting the NFL despite all reporting suggesting otherwise, and (b) that Russia intentionally caused the Earthquake.
I think given the self-selective nature of a federated social network we already need to be vigilant about preventing any kind of 4chanification. I’m not calling for censorship of any kind, but I do find it raises some beige flags for me about Lemmy…
If the instance or community guidelines state “X isn’t allowed,” then it isn’t censorship to remove X. It becomes censorship when mods start removing things for reasons other than enforcing instance or community guidelines. Until that point, it’s just content moderation.
If the c/Androids community guidelines state that “This community is about human-like robots. Posts regarding the phone OS are unwelcome” and a mod removes such a post, that isn’t censorship. Likewise for spam, or reposts, or any number of other things.
On the other hand if the mods remove a post about a human-like robot built in China because they’re sinophobic, that is censorship. Likewise if the human-like robot was built by Tesla, if the lead engineer were a woman, or anything along those lines. Likewise if the post were instead critical of such a robot - still censorship (unless it’s a news only community and the post was free text or a meme).
Likewise if a community’s guidelines state that controversial statements without reputable sources backing them up, statements known to be false, or statements that have been flagged as false by a fact checker are prohibited, then removing such statements isn’t censorship. It’s moderation.