If the task is impossible then don't try doing it

People, en masse, can be Hell as that French philosopher chappie once said. This produces a problem on the internet where there’s a mass insisting upon just being people. Moderating their behaviour might be nice if it’s possible. But what if it’s not?

There are really only two ways to deal with it (unless you’re Elon Musk, who has decided not to even try). One is to choke off the supply. But if you do that you undermine your business model – which is to have everyone on your platform – and you will also be accused of “censorship” in the land of the first amendment. The other is to amplify your internal capacity to cope with the torrent – which is what “moderation” is. But the scale of the challenge is such that even if Meta employed half a million human moderators it wouldn’t be up to the task. Still, even then, section 230 would exempt it from the law of the land. Beating Ashby’s law, though, might prove an altogether tougher proposition, even for AI.

So, either people get to say whatever - in all its glorious vileness - or the internet doesn’t work. Which does rather solve the problem for us, doesn’t it? As it’s impossible to have the internet without the classically liberal free speech stuff then we’ll just have to have the internet with the classically liberal free speech stuff.

Glad we’re able to sort that out for everyone. Much effort can now be saved.