Of possible relevance to the Fifth Circuit's recent decision in Netchoice v. Paxton.

Reading the Fifth Circuit's decision in Netchoice v. Paxton brings me back to the old days of the Volokh Conspiracy. A little bit of context: Back when we were at volokh.com, we introduced open comment threads. For a few years, I spent over an hour a day, every day, moderating Volokh Conspiracy comment threads. I stopped after we moved to The Washington Post in 2014, where comment moderation was up to them. I'm very glad I don't do comment moderation anymore. But my comment moderation experience at volokh.com left a lasting impression.

I think three of those impressions might be relevant to thinking about Netchoice.

First: It is a strange rule of human nature that most people who are moderated in an online forum feel, with great certainty, that they are being censored for their beliefs. Few people think they just went too far, or that they broke the rules. Moderation is usually seen as the fruit of bias. So liberal commenters were positive I deleted their comments or even banned them because this is a conservative blog and we were afraid that liberal truths would pierce through the darkness and show the false claims of conservatives. And conservative commenters were completely confident that I deleted their comments or even banned them because we are liberals trying to prevent conservative truths from exposing liberal lies. It just happened all the time. Moderation led to claims of...

Read Full Story: https://reason.com/volokh/2022/09/25/thoughts-on-internet-content-moderation-...