I will first reveal my bias, I do not like censorship. I am a fervent believer in free speech, the freedom to offend, and the freedom to provoke. If you can't survive an open debate then I don't think your arguments are up to snuff. Those who need to hide behind a wall of officialdom for credibility should stay in print media, and avoid giving out there email address.
Huffington Post is a moderated blog, also known as a censorship by rules. Censorship itself is not always an impediment to the free exchange of ideas. By removing foul language a person should be able to make more or less the same point they would have otherwise, while enhancing the argument past the realm of the emotional response. By removing spam and repeated postings, and keeping users on topic you insure the people are not forced to read pages of unrelated useless material or a single persons opinion blanketing a site.
The problem comes when you start to censor thoughts and attitudes regardless of the language or relevance to the topic.
Liberals have often been accused of being thought police by the right. Insisting on political correctness to the point of absurdity. They even called it the slow creep of fascist thinking. Of course conservatives are notoriously nationalistic and seek to limit speech to being supportive of their own policies. Nonetheless, to some extent their indictment of liberal speech restriction is valid. We do risk restricting constructive speech in the name of avoiding offense. Hence a ban on provocative speech would certainly be an impediment to free debate.
Below is the intro to the FAQ at Huffington Post regarding comment moderation. The last clause "are posted with the explicit intention of provoking other commenters or the staff at Huffington Post." is the one I have a problem with.
FAQ: Comments & Moderation
Q: What is the Huffington Post's Comment Policy?
Huffington Post pre-moderates comments on our blog posts and post-moderates comments on news stories. We never censor comments based on political or ideological point of view. We only delete those comments that include the following transgressions:
• are abusive, off-topic, use excessive foul language
• include ad hominem attacks including comments that celebrate the death or illness of any person, public figure or otherwise
• contain racist, sexist, homophobic and other slurs
• are solicitations and/or advertising for personal blogs and websites
• thread spamming (you've posted this same comment elsewhere on the site
• are posted with the explicit intention of provoking other commenters or the staff at Huffington Post.
The other posting guidelines regarding spam, racial slurs, curse words, death threats, cheering on illness or injury of others, are fairly benign forms of censorship. A person can easily express themselves without those things and achieve similar effect. If anything avoiding the low road of simple name calling and profanity enhances arguments. The problem is the prohibition against provocative comments. Provocation of others is a relevant part of the debate. The media too often refuses to be provocative beyond sensationalizing the most mundane aspects of the debate, like flag pins.
Imagine if we removed all the provocative comments from DailyKos? Forcing the people of America into a narrow frame of mind seems to be the net effect of our Media. The dumbing down do to a lack of challenges to status quo are to blame for much of our ills. We the people and especially the progressive people ought demand greater freedom, the maximum of freedom for those speaking online especially in the media mainstream. Those who reach the most people have even greater burden to expand the conversation, and allow for democratic discussion.
Ideally Huffington Post could switch to a user moderated discussion. There is no need for big brother at Huffington Post to filter user comments. The users are more than capable of doing it themselves as they do on Youtube, and Dailykos. The basic prohibitions against spam and profanity can be enforced by moderate moderation, but opinions provocative or not should be judged democratically. Ultimately even the hidden comments ought be just a mouse click away. Adults don't need thought police. We ought respect the wisdom of the Bill of Rights and honor it. Free Speech can save America it has done so many times over.