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Comment by edmundsauto | Hacker News Reader

It may be shocking, but sometimes companies try to make decisions that benefit them in the long run. Even advertising companies! It makes sense that a toxic environment will turn off people in the long run, and most well intentioned people (ie the majority of Reddit, Google, or FB employees) want to run a platform that adds value and is not a cesspool.

The realities of staying in business sometimes override that. I don’t think we should consider it a default.

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>It makes sense that a toxic environment will turn off people in the long run, and most well intentioned people (ie the majority of Reddit, Google, or FB employees) want to run a platform that adds value and is not a cesspool.

I don't think this is supported by the evidence.

The evidence: the current state of Twitter, Facebook, etc. None of them have the necessary level of moderation and until they do, they will continue to be cesspools.

There is not enough people in the world to moderate social media.

Then it shouldn't exist in this form. Either create a social network structured in such a way that it can be moderated (not my job to figure how) or make them illegal.

I realize I probably didn't make this clear, I don't want to ban user-generated content from the internet, merely that you need to show some proactive moderation and that there needs to be meaningful consequences for inaction. Hate speech is not the same as free speech and these are private services that should be held to a minimum standard in the same way restaurants have to pass a health inspection.

Which is pretty much the reason that my use of Twitter and Reddit is pared down to super specific niches because once you leave your bubble and go to #general it’s an absolute dumpster fire.

If they could actually rein that shit in I would use it more. Just having the tools to filter that stuff out of my feed would honestly be enough. TikTok is pretty much where I go for discovery now because it learned really quickly to not show me any political content.

I don't think it's clear those communities are cesspools, while agreeing there are toxic waste dumps in each of them. I also think it's hard for an outsider to look at these giants and generalize our opinions to evaluate their internal priorities.

> "Even advertising companies!"

Many national brands have been steadily advertising on Fox News throughout the current administration, contradicting your thesis.

It's hard to predict if continued advertising will hurt them. Building a toxic community, if you're trying to build something that will last, is going to hurt a company.

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