I'd conjecture that all systems necessarily grow from simple rules and die of complex ones. The inflection point where enforcement becomes inconsistent is the inflection point on growth.
The Vivaldi rules are in fact simple, with the exception of what seems like a wrongthink clause that crosses services, which is like a notwithstanding/wish-for-more-wishes rule. The BDFL model of open source worked for this at limited scales, where a person is making a decision and taking responsibility for it. Facebook almost succeeded in doing this well with their public board of censors, but really, once you make it a committee, it launders accountability and becomes arbitrary again.
Regarding the study of law, if you want corruption and inescapable suffering, create complex and inconsistent rules.
Twitter also could have done a good job when Dorsey had a kind of royal assent that legitimized decisions but he seemed to give that up. Agrawal has a brief opportunity to set good precedents as well. The objection I think most people have to censorship is when the censors don't take ownership of the decision, as then it's basically gaslighting.
Rules and punishment are simple, provided they roll up to a person enforcing them. When you move from that, you get a system that is easily gamed, a kind of star chamber, and then most of your effort as a platform owner goes into fighting the tiny minority of people who game the system at the expense of the rest. It's so dumb and obvious that it can only be on purpose.
The Vivaldi rules are in fact simple, with the exception of what seems like a wrongthink clause that crosses services, which is like a notwithstanding/wish-for-more-wishes rule. The BDFL model of open source worked for this at limited scales, where a person is making a decision and taking responsibility for it. Facebook almost succeeded in doing this well with their public board of censors, but really, once you make it a committee, it launders accountability and becomes arbitrary again.
Regarding the study of law, if you want corruption and inescapable suffering, create complex and inconsistent rules.
Twitter also could have done a good job when Dorsey had a kind of royal assent that legitimized decisions but he seemed to give that up. Agrawal has a brief opportunity to set good precedents as well. The objection I think most people have to censorship is when the censors don't take ownership of the decision, as then it's basically gaslighting.
Rules and punishment are simple, provided they roll up to a person enforcing them. When you move from that, you get a system that is easily gamed, a kind of star chamber, and then most of your effort as a platform owner goes into fighting the tiny minority of people who game the system at the expense of the rest. It's so dumb and obvious that it can only be on purpose.