3 ms·

Censorship is not always an abuse of power. Forum moderation is a form of censorship. The moderators on HN will delete your comment if it violates the community

Censorship is not always an abuse of power. Forum moderation is a form of censorship. The moderators on HN will delete your comment if it violates the community guidelines. But I'm certainly not against that, in fact, that's why I'm here in the first place.

belorn 5y ago
The question comes down to how much power HN moderators has and how they use it. If HN was the primary place where the wast majority of startups got funding, and HN moderator would delete comments in order to influence the conversation between investors and founders, such moderation would very quickly be seen as an abuse of power. It is one form of moderation that I have never seen on HN. As it is, HN moderators has a rather limited power and rarely been exercising the little power they have. A way to describe this is that people wielding power do not always commit act of abuse, and all power is not equal. There is no true name policy on HN, no rules against people contacting each other outside of HN, no restrictions against people based on political, religious or other views. I can mention the competing communication platform discord and not get banned for doing so. People can read HN without creating accounts, and HN do not block VPNs or Tor. As a tool for authoritarians, HN moderation is not an effective one. Possible by design. Their behavior has so far not been to utilize power in order to maintain power. There is not much left if you remove power and abuse from the definition of censorship, and so I would not describe HN moderation as it is now as censorship. Occasionally they do things like automatically reduce article weights based on specific political topics, which is a soft kind of censorship, but from what I have seen they have taken a bit more relaxed attitude and not done that so often any more.

3 ms·

Censorship is not always an abuse of power. Forum moderation is a form of censorship. The moderators on HN will delete your comment if it violates the community

by ookdatnog 5y ago

belorn 5y ago
The question comes down to how much power HN moderators has and how they use it. If HN was the primary place where the wast majority of startups got funding, and HN moderator would delete comments in order to influence the conversation between investors and founders, such moderation would very quickly be seen as an abuse of power. It is one form of moderation that I have never seen on HN. As it is, HN moderators has a rather limited power and rarely been exercising the little power they have. A way to describe this is that people wielding power do not always commit act of abuse, and all power is not equal. There is no true name policy on HN, no rules against people contacting each other outside of HN, no restrictions against people based on political, religious or other views. I can mention the competing communication platform discord and not get banned for doing so. People can read HN without creating accounts, and HN do not block VPNs or Tor. As a tool for authoritarians, HN moderation is not an effective one. Possible by design. Their behavior has so far not been to utilize power in order to maintain power. There is not much left if you remove power and abuse from the definition of censorship, and so I would not describe HN moderation as it is now as censorship. Occasionally they do things like automatically reduce article weights based on specific political topics, which is a soft kind of censorship, but from what I have seen they have taken a bit more relaxed attitude and not done that so often any more.