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Comment by kelseyfrog | Hacker News Reader

What a weird perspective. Anyone who's ran a social media site seems to understand that unmoderated sites devolve into hatepits that drive out the normies until they capture the orbit of 1-10k full-timers. That's no way to run a business - money speaks.

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Likewise weird perspective.

The early reddit was a place for reading interesting stories and having intelligent conversations. Now it's among the most hateful places on the internet, despite all the "moderation".

It seems censorship doesn't actually solve the issue of hatred, it's a question of culture. In the early days it was a community of geeks and people looking to discuss niche interests. Now the mainstream is there with all its toxic political bickering and personal attacks. The more the thought police tries to turn social media into autocracy, the worse it gets. Early internet forums and remailers had trolls, but it was never this bad.

Hackernews btw also has much less moderation and is less horrible. Again, it's simply down to the users that you cultivate. Also unlike reddit, HN has never hired pedophilia supporters as admins and then tried covering it up by censoring mentions of it.

I think claiming HN has less overt moderation and still manages to be civilized is a little like pointing to a low-crime part of town without much of a police presence, and highlighting it as evidence that cops are unnecessary. In both cases, it's not that policing isn't necessary; it's that—thanks to a less crime-prone community and/or earlier, heavier policing—it's become unnecessary. You don't see a lot of overt moderation on places like HN or Ars Technica, but that's because you learn pretty quickly that ugliness isn't tolerated. (And for what it's worth, a lot of the trolls getting downvoted/told off by dang here do claim that they're being silenced by ideological thought police.)

"Censorship", as you chose to put it, might not "solve" hate, but it absolutely establishes a culture where hate is less welcome, and I think most of us here would much prefer that culture to some anarchic cesspool like 4chan. I've been on the internet for over half my life, and I have never once in that timeframe seen an unmoderated online community that didn't revolve into the internet version of a failed state. You said, accurately, that a crucial factor in any online community is the users you cultivate; I'm not sure how such a cultivation process could work without some level of moderation.

If you can show me an example of a completely unmoderated community that matches HN in terms of civility and intelligent discourse, I would be very curious to see it. As far as I can tell, such a thing has never existed and never will.

HN is the most moderated site I visit and that includes Reddit. I'm not sure which version of HN you're using. Try browsing with showdead on and vast swaths of moderated content shows itself. Either way, I don't think we're going to agree on a quantitative metric of moderation, so it's unproductive to continue this line of discourse.

I always have showdead enabled. Really not sure what you mean, there is very little moderation here, most of the flagging is simply due to downvoting by users and like you say yourself you can see this by ticking "showdead".

Is it possible you're not aware of all the censorship on reddit? Most of the posts and comments are removed without users even knowing if they weren't looking with special tools. Many times even those making the submissions themself aren't aware, since perfidiously it still shows up to the user who made the comment or post. Try browsing with 'reveddit', which is good for making both moderator as well as some admin deletions visible. But even that doesn't catch everything.

The cool people get to platforms early. It's all great and fun times when it's small and the less cool people aren't there to ruin it. Later, the moderators and the users change to be not so intimate or as great on average, leading to disengagement and burnout of those early cool people.

As someone who is shadow banned, the moderation is no less strict here than on Reddit. Your experience will ultimately depend on a mods particular mood or sensitive topics.

You're banned, but not shadow banned. We told you we were banning you and why:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31332637

First time I’m seeing that link (56 days later).

So the distinction between ban and shadow ban seems pretty minor. Anyway zero warnings and I’ve posted no “ideological” material other than fully in context responses to posts.

Again, same here as Reddit. Mods didn’t like a particular political association with a post so made the choice to label it ideological and ban me.

It always feels like the mods are against you, but plenty of HN users with roughly the same political or ideological associations stay within the site guidelines and don't get banned. The converse is also true: users with opposite views to yours, who break the site guidelines in the way that you did, also get banned.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Anarchy leads to 4chan. An undefended community ceases to be.

OTOH, not all moderation is equal. Slanted, arbitrary, mercurial, and/or unfair moderation doesn't serve the greater good either. Moderators need to be neutral, mature, and not use moderation to endorse political activist chilling effects by silencing debate.

> Anarchy leads to 4chan

4chan has quite a bit of moderation.

Musk seems to think free speech Twitter can escape that fate.

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