ABSTRACT
After providing a brief description of content moderation and its various forms and uses, this chapter presents several concerns regarding the use of content moderation to mitigate the threats of misinformation. Many of the concerns for content moderation have to do with the absence of trust in content moderators. Other concerns are due to the likelihood that content moderation will fail to eliminate misinformation. More strongly, it is argued that non-comprehensive removals of misinformation can increase the deceptive threat of that misinformation which remains. It is then argued that, because the removal of misinformation and those who spread it constitutes tampering with the social evidence, these forms of content moderation constitute epistemic and skeptical threats in their own right. Finally, it is argued that John Stuart Mill’s epistemic defense of free speech provides further arguments against the use of heavy-handed forms of content moderation to mitigate misinformation.
