A challenge of moderating on any platform is making calls about what constitutes offensive content. Twitter, for example, decided that the right to exist of trans people is a contested matter of opinion, and protects insults and slurs directed at us rather than removing them.
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On Slate, we delete anything that could be construed as an insult towards another commenter, but protect people's right to insult public figures, as long as the insult doesn't double as a slur or an attack on a group of people.
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So, for instance, we deleted any comment insulting Elizabeth Warren that doubled as a slur against Native Americans, even though she herself is not a Native American. But you can call the president an amoral idiot all day long (Elizabeth Warren too, for that matter).
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When Donald Trump was elected, we faced a conundrum- had racism become part of the mainstream of public debate? Should we allow comments we would have deleted prior to his election? Ultimately we decided not to adapt our rules to make room for politically empowered bigotry.
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When @TwitterSupport refuses to remove slurs against trans people, their calculation is that we are more an issue to be debated than we are human beings who deserve equal protections.
By not taking sides, they by default take the side that dehumanizes us.
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