A talk with Bill Ottman, co-founder and CEO of the social media platform Minds (minds.com), which is known for its minimal content moderation, “free speech” approach. Ottman and other Minds contributors (including Daryl Davis, a black man known for deradicalizing white supremacists via conversations) recently wrote a paper titled The Censorship Effect, which examined how strict censorship/banning policies may actually increase antisocial, radicalized views and that perhaps more lax moderation was the better solution. Ottman and I talk about the psychology that would explain how heavy censorship policies would increase grievances and anger, about the complexity of social media content moderation strategies, about strategies they’ve used at Minds, about why people think open-source approaches are optimal, and about Elon Musk buying Twitter and what it might mean.
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