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Comment by EdSharkey | Hacker News Reader

There is only one substantive reason I am aware of: power.

Suppression of speech, especially political speech, is a raw power play by the suppressors.

That's a losing game though. I agree with GP, only dumb (aka honest) conduits last.

Should HN be completely un-moderated? There's a decent chance that the quality of the forum would drop and users could move elsewhere.

I firmly believe that Facebook is responsible for shaping the tone of their platform (every social network does this in one way or another). A platform that allows anything may not attract the audience that Facebook desires.

Arguing that Facebook cannot set the tone of their platform is a losing game.

HN is probably as good as it gets in terms of striking the balance between comteting interests. You may be right in the current environment, but were the 4chans of the world not constantly shooed away maybe there would be no need for heavy handed approach.

I didn't say it cannot. I said it should not. It should stay as neutral as it can possibly be.

Moderation is great, I can SEE dead posts on hn if I opt into them. Taste is a good thing. I like the choices about what hits the main page on hn most days, that's why I come here.

I cannot opt into a deplatformed political person's speech on Twitter because they're absent. So, no, I don't conflate taste and moderation with silencing political speech, in an election year no less, like you do.

HN bans people too as well as just marking comments as dead.

Not for political speech. One is not like the other.

Depends on your definition of "political speech."

People have been flagged and banned for anti-semitic and racist speech as well as "nationalistic flamewar," all of which are linked with politics which get people deplatformed elsewhere.

Even so, while I disagree with banning happening on hn, it is usually prefaced with warnings about the rules of the site by the moderators. There's decent human beings at least trying to keep the peace here and steer discussions back on-topic.

That is NOT what's happening on Twitter. Rules are not evenly applied based on politics. #acab is just fine but the gentle ribbing of "learn to code" is suspension and ban-worthy.

All depends on which group's butt is being made to hurt.

Seems like it should be possible for users to self-moderate, no? In the old and wild Usenet days there were plenty of popular, un-moderated forums with incredibly rich, thoughtful, vibrant discussion. Yes, you would get some unpleasantness on occasion, but you had kill files for that. It should be possible to do better today, we are much better at AI and online anonymity is no longer the norm.

There is only one substantive reason I am aware of: power.

I'm sure you can find more substantive arguments if you try.

Wanting to suppress discourse isn't a substantive reason. Saying that's the "substantive reason" that people want more content moderation is just a fancy way of calling those people bad people.

Surely I find that power is the one thing that leftist ideologies covet.

Don't like someone's politics, or are they too effective at counter-narrative? Cancel them. Destroy. That's the message. Maybe you are not such a wrecker personally, but the mob you may belong to always is.

Nobody escapes the mob, and they always end up eating their own. Don't step outta line, comrade!

There are countless venues on the internet for your speech, but a platform deciding not to promote a wider broadcast of certain types of content is a substantially different thing than suppressing that content. The neutral default would be "let it be shouted into the void" which is not where we are right now; right now Facebook programatically promotes and distributes a lot of stuff to a far wider audience than we see it organically.

If you believe only hands-off platforms will last, then you have very little reason to be concerned with a particular platform's policy anyway.

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