Re: [bitcoin-dev] Censorship

[David Vorick <david.vorick@gmail.com>]

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I am not sure that this is on-topic for the bitcoin-dev mailing list, but
it seems politically relevant enough that I'm going to respond.

/r/bitcoin and bitcointalk.org are both discussion websites that pertain to
a specific topic. All (or nearly all) discussion websites pertaining to a
specific topic have a set of rules that get enforced to facilitate relevant
and interesting discussion. These rules help to block spam, and help to
make sure that discussions happen in their appropriate places. The rules in
place on the two primary bitcoin discussion sites have helped facilitate a
large userbase frequented by many relevant experts. I do believe that we
can thank the strict moderation policies for much of the activity that
happens which is technically interesting.

/r/bitcoin and bitcointalk.org are both centralized forums. As such, the
rules are going to be set by a centralized authority. The rules set have
been set to keep the discussion as interesting and relevant as possible.
When a certain theme becomes a massive echo chamber or little more than
beating a dead horse, it makes sense to implement moderation. Calling it
'censorship' is misleading, because a government authority is not
threatening punishment for the discussion of a certain topic. People are
not banned from visiting forums or websites where off-topic (or
against-the-rules) discussion is happening. People's /r/bitcoin rights are
not being revoked because they are subscribed to a controvertial subreddit.
That would be censorship.

Many people are clearly unhappy with the moderation happening on /r/bitcoin
and bitcointalk.org. Luckily, the switching cost for online discussion
forums is very low. I'm now going to invite people to post links to bitcoin
discussion forums where the moderation authority is different.

I know that a recently popular subreddit is /r/bitcoin_uncensored

I am interested to see what other forums people think are worth mentioning.

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