Web 2.0 often thinks its solved problems it hasn't and this is just another example. The only people who will be surprised by this are the people who bought into the hype that "everyone's opinion is equal in the new social web"
The truth is you have to work hard to be listened to and sometimes you have to keep repeating your good idea over and over and over again until someone listens. There was a flurry of posts just a few weeks ago (started off by Paul Buchheit: http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009/01/overnight-success-t...) that pointed out how "Overnight Successes" are often things someone has been working on for many years. But it was only when they'd been around long enough to be trusted that people started actually paying attention.
But if you work to establish yourself you will eventually be listened to and that is why this isn't censorship.
The victims of both "soft" and "hard" censorship suffer a similar loss of voice and power. One of the author's implied points is that "Censorship by Glut" has the same societal effect as "Censorship by Edict."
e.g. compare censorship via china's internet firewall thing to "censorship" by America's total lack of internet firewall thing. isn't it pretty obvious the resulting internet communities are different?
I am not sure the slashdot author understand the paper he read, he says:"the best often rise to the top, the very worst rarely do," yet the paper says:
"In general, the 'best' songs never do very badly, and the 'worst' songs never do extremely well, but almost any other result is possible." http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_dodds_watts06_full.p...
Namely, the paper does not say that the best often rise to the top, simply that they are unlikely to do badly.
The truth is you have to work hard to be listened to and sometimes you have to keep repeating your good idea over and over and over again until someone listens. There was a flurry of posts just a few weeks ago (started off by Paul Buchheit: http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009/01/overnight-success-t...) that pointed out how "Overnight Successes" are often things someone has been working on for many years. But it was only when they'd been around long enough to be trusted that people started actually paying attention.
But if you work to establish yourself you will eventually be listened to and that is why this isn't censorship.