With certain exceptions, freedom of speech is encouraged, and users are uniformly opposed to any form of censorship.
The life of a virtual community is rarely free from conflicts. These can be expressed rather brutally in the form of rhetorical diatribes known as flames, during which several members can “flame” anyone who disrupts the group's moral rules. Conversely, affinities, intellectual alliances, and even friendships can develop within these groups, just as they do between people who meet regularly with each other for conversation. For the participants, other members of virtual communities are indeed human, for their style of writing, skills, and opinions allow their personalities to shine through.
Manipulation and deceit are always possible in a virtual community— as they are anywhere else or in any other medium: on television, in the press, over the telephone, by mail, or during any “flesh-and-blood” meeting.
The majority of virtual communities organize the signed expression of their members in the presence of attentive readers capable of responding in the presence of other attentive readers. Consequently, as I suggested earlier, far from encouraging the irresponsibility associated with anonimity, virtual communities explore new forms of public opinion. We know that the destiny of public opinion is intimately associated with that of modern democracy.
Pièrre Lévy (1997/2001:109), Cyberculture, Part II: Theoretical Issues, Chapter 7: The Social Movement of Cyberculture; Virtual Communities
Sunday, July 13, 2008
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