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Comment by Cthulhu_ | Hacker News Reader

I'm a full adult (legally anyway) but I can't control everything I see on HN or Reddit or whatever when I'm passively scrolling; I for one am glad that there's giant teams of moderators curating the internet for me.

I'll advocate for freedom of speech but I don't want to have to listen to everything.

View on HN

Hard disagree. I would love for moderation to be opt-out, for example. I might not agree with moderator actions, so I would very much prefer to see an unfiltered HN instead of having someone else dictate what I am allowed to see or not. The same applies to other websites, especially Reddit.

Alas, I have no choice in the matter, but I would very much prefer I did.

While I understand some content HAS to be regulated (CSAM) doesn’t mean everything has to be, because inevitably that will devolve into the government policing wrongthink.

enable showdead to see killed comments/articles on HN.

Thank you!

Unfortunately this doesn't let you reply to dead comments. Still better than hiding the wrongthink completely though.

i’ve browsed with showdead for over a decade and have vouched for exactly one comment. it’s usually just no-think.

>I'll advocate for freedom of speech but I don't want to have to listen to everything.

Nobody is preventing you from filtering out at the client side whatever it is that you don't want to hear.

And you just end up with poorly integrated moderation with extra steps when community starts cooperating to make it more efficient (e.g. maintaining filter lists). Or there's no effective moderation so people that want more curated content and better UX moderation-wise will move elsewhere. Nobody's forcing you to use moderated platforms either.

That said, I think the showdead setting in HN is good to have, so you can still opt to see content that would otherwise be filtered.

> Nobody's forcing you to use moderated platforms either.

Except that's exactly what is happening when the "moderation" is mandated by law. Which is the topic of discussion here.

I think the GP was talking about usefulness of moderation in HN, Reddit, etc. in general. And parent was implying that filtering should exist only client-side (so no moderation by the platform), which I thought was unrealistic for some users that want moderation and who are then free to seek out more fitting platforms.

But yes, in a world where "moderation" is mandated by law, there'd be no alternatives.

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