> I've never stepped foot in the continent of Africa
Wow, you have a problem.
And meanwhile, dang has rate-limited me when I try to only post things I am willing to say in person.
Maybe LinkedIn (where everyone knows who everyone is) is the only place for honest discussion. HN clone with "sign up with LinkedIn" exclusively anyone? But then, maybe some people will hold back their true opinions or lie about things to appease their employers/employees/governments/public etc. Having to change jobs over one of these comments would be no fun.
Maybe like ClubHouse (where you have to be invited by someone else on your real phone number) but where you don't necessarily reveal your full identity to the public... but since some people would know, you can't blatantly lie either... i.e. gives you plausable deniability when you need it but some people still know who you are to prevent you from lying... and then it works kinda like twitter where you can write posts or share links, which has a feed based on upvotes like HN... And you can write arbitarily long posts. Elon Musk should make that maybe?