To wonder why posters feel they are being 'silenced'?

[Locutus2000]

There have been a lot of posters recently complaining they are 'not allowed' to hold a particular view on MN, while posting said view all over MN.

Mumsnet only remove posts which clearly break very clear and I think fair guidelines, not because the person reporting disagrees with the poster.

Said guidelines are

No personal attacks
No posts that break the law, including hate speech of any kind
No trolling, misleading or deliberately inflammatory behaviour
No trollhunting
No spamming
No multiple accounts

What I can't see there is anyone being 'silenced' for any particular opinion or stance, and it's not been my user experience over many years. I've never seen any evidence of political bias amongst MNHQ staff.

AIBU to think those restrictions are perfectly reasonable and fairly enforced?

I don't know the posters you are referring to: I've not particularly seen anyone complaining about being silenced.

My only experience of anything like being silenced is when I've posted a view point which isn't the popular view point on the thread. Then I've experienced a " pile on" by other posters. Some disagree in a civilised manner, but some get really unpleasant and personal - generally not quite breaking the personal abuse guidelines although sometimes they do.
Funnily enough I've experienced this mainly on the Chat forum, which I get the impression is quite cliquey. It is very unpleasant when it happens and makes me think.twice about posting on some threads.
But generally I think the MN guidelines are fair and I've not really seen evidence of political bias.

I’ve seen obvious racism, homophobia and of course the mumsnet favourite rampant transphobia, so not sure who’s policing that second rule there

I’ve seen people complaining about this after having nonsense threads with conspiracy theories about Covid removed…

My experience of anything like being silenced is having my comments deleted when I've defended the OP or myself against another very unpleasant poster with their shitty comments.
I don't think what i said was a rule break but couldn't care less if my comment is deleted. I'd rather stick up for a vulnerable poster that someone waded in on than stay quiet.

I've seen it when they have several people disagreeing with them. It happens sometimes but it doesn't mean someone is being silenced, especially since they usually continue to argue their opinion and certainly don't go silent.

I often feel it's something some people throw out there when they are running out of arguments and/or want to play victim. (Same with bullying, it is thrown around far too easily).

Yup I've seen all of the above left to stand.

Because some people feel that being disagreed with is the same as being silenced.

I think part of the issue is that moderation can be a bit random, so something that's left to stand at one point may be deleted at another.
I've rarely been deleted, but the first time I was I had written something like "Not this again" on a post which had been thrashed out at least three times by the same poster (and she was still wrong). Apparently this was a "personal attack".

I would have accepted this was possibly right except on the same thread I'd reported one of the Op's posts which was definitely a personal attack on another poster, and got the response that it wasn't breaking guidelines.

I assume it was two different mods who made the decisions, but it left a bit of a sour taste.

However I've noticed a few times recently people implying that they're being censored by not being allowed to mention certain things. The implication is that "bigger powers" are forcing it.
The person will post something along the lines of:

"When I mentioned the name of the person I was deleted"
Now there wasn't a deleted/hidden post on the thread, so I contacted MNHQ to ask about it. Their reply said:
"Thanks for reporting this post. We've no evidence of any posts having been deleted from this thread. It's possible that a post was temporarily 'hidden' by our (sometimes over-zealous) automatic word filters, but if any posts were indeed hidden, they've been reviewed and reinstated by now."

Now I'm sure the person would say that was MNHQ hiding it, but I think it is more likely that the person posting was trying to imply that the rumour they were referring to was definitely true because a higher power than MN was blocking it.

I'll also add that on another thread where someone had put something like that, further down the thread someone had written something along the lines of "You mean <apparently automatically deleted name> " so it clearly wasn't!

So I think there are times when you get an over zealous mod who deletes things they shouldn't- even possibly with their own agenda (mods are humans after all and will have their own biases). Equally well there are mods who don't delete things that probably should be.
And I think there are people who have tried to make themselves/their "information" more important by claiming to be deleted.

I think 'right wing' views are stifled. I've read perfectly fine comments that don't break guidelines and seen them deleted shortly after.

Because other social media platforms let you hide or block users, I think some people are genuinely uncomfortable with being unable to curate what they see on MN and they are more used to only seeing people that agree with them.

This.

Oh I think this is an interesting point: that some people genuinely are only used to seeing view points that synch with their own.
It goes some way to explain the outrage of some posters, totally out of proportion to the issue being discussed, when someone puts forward a differing view point.