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And we are all better off for it. I don’t know how many times I have to beat this drum but good communities that people want to spend time in are heavily moder

And we are all better off for it. I don’t know how many times I have to beat this drum but good communities that people want to spend time in are heavily moderated. Free speech bros (who don’t actually really believe in it) have yet to create an attractive platform that doesn’t have moderation. Moderation is key and what some people consider “heavy handed moderation” makes for a nice place to hang out. Without it HN would languish as people with interesting things to add are driven off by the people who think they have a right to say whatever they want anywhere they want to say it.

johnnyanmac 3y ago
I'm not even sure if I can name 67,000 websites, so it's still a shocking number. Simultaneously, it does slightly worry me that the list isn't published should I end up submitting a "legitmate" link that is never seen.
- archo 3y ago
  "About 67k” sites are banned For numerical context, I just looked up a list of current 'unique porn domains' which numbers 53,644. Edit: Add; An additional 209,626 unique domains for adware, malware, tracking. etc.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
kyleyeats 3y ago
What's a free speech bro?
- jjoonathan 3y ago
  Me, before I saw forum after forum after forum fall to the Nazi Bar Problem. (The term is newer than my formative experiences, but it's the best concise explanation of the dynamic I know.)
  - joshstrange 3y ago
    I think a good number of us here, myself included, fell for this trap at some point. It appeals to the "simple solutions" part of our brains and is very black/white thinking. Thankfully most of us grew out of it, others... well yeah.
    - jjoonathan 3y ago
      I wouldn't call it a "trap," I think fairness and simplicity are perfectly reasonable goals to aspire to. It's just that in this case I have seen an abundance of evidence that people start to jump ship long before a max-fair judicial process starts to correct the course, so it is a highly unfortunate fact of the universe that a good captain must have an itchy trigger finger on the ban button with all the false positives and collateral damage that entails.
- vkou 3y ago
  Charitably? Someone who believes that because we can't tell some kinds of good speech from some kinds of bad speech, we should give up trying. It makes about as much sense as eating a moldy blue cheese once, enjoying it[1], and deciding that from now on, you won't turn your nose at eating whatever putrescent, rotting garbage is put in front of you, regardless of how sick it makes you. ---- Less charitably? Someone who can very much tell the difference between good and bad speech, but is cynically promoting bad speech, for selfish reasons. [1] Despite a general understanding that moldy food is not suitable for eating.
  - kyleyeats 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - vkou 3y ago
      1. I've never once mentioned gender, I don't think that's a very good-faith interpretation of my response. 2. If you're actually confused on this subject, and are asking in good faith, I would recommend starting your research with the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance It will provide you with a rough frame of taking this argument to an extreme, by demonstrating that various groups of people need to set some kind of non-zero, practical limits for behaviours they permit. This particular group of people sets very particular, practical limits for those behaviours, enforced by the moderation team.
      - kyleyeats 3y ago
        You don't think 'bro' is gendered? It was a charitable interpretation. You think it's the permissible form of sexism. The paradox of tolerance is what I'm operating off of too. My conclusion is that you can't hate the hateful without being hateful yourself. What's your conclusion? That you're always automatically on the right side so it's okay to be intolerant? Where's the paradox for you? It's a 'you can't have your cake and eat it too' thing. What are you giving up, exactly? You shift very subtly from talking about beliefs to behaviors here. I'm specifically asking about beliefs, because the behavior in question here is the expression of beliefs. You're speaking out here against a group. Why shouldn't you be deplatformed? Why should we tolerate your intolerance?
- sorokod 3y ago
  I'll give this a shot: An XXX bro is someone who aggressively promotes XXX as a common good while actually motivated by promotion of a narrow agenda. Often associated with individuals that know next to nothing about XXX
- Pyramus 3y ago
  From what I've learned here on HN someone who thinks that "free speech" is absolute - their right to free speech outshines the personal rights of others. So instead of discussing where my rights end and your rights start, they will argue that no line should be drawn. In addition, from what I understand, they seem to think that democracy is a consequence of "free speech", not the other way around.
  - theultdev 3y ago
    How does free speech infringe on other's rights? If you include spam, well that's not speech, usually not even by humans. Spam is a form of censorship by [D]DoS. If you include threats, well that's an action, not speech, and it's illegal, because of the action.
    - cmh89 3y ago
      Threats are by definition not an action.
    - Pyramus 3y ago
      Not sure I understand your post, both spam and threats are speech (at least in the US), so maybe something was lost in translation? Here are some of the limits of free speech in the US: > Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, false statements of fact, and commercial speech such as advertising. Defamation that causes harm to reputation is a tort and also an exception to free speech. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_ex... And here some examples from Germany (translated via DeepL): > the protection of personal honour against insult or defamation, the disclosure of information classified as secret, the limits of morality and the protection of minors, the limits of public safety, unfair competition by discrediting the goods or services of a competitor, the unauthorised disclosure of copyrighted information, racial discrimination https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meinungsfreiheit#Grenzen_(Schranken)_der_Meinungsfreiheit:_Art._5_Abs._2_GG https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meinungsfreiheit#Grenzen_(Schr...
asow92 3y ago
Not disagreeing with you necessarily, although, how do we know we're better off for it if we don't know what's on the list?
- nickthegreek 3y ago
  You don't and they are under no obligation to provide this list. It is not clear to me that providing the list would be constructive either. A good witch hunt will at least point out a plausible witch.
  - asow92 3y ago
    > It is not clear to me that providing the list would be constructive I agree, it can't be clear unless you know what's on the list. More transparency is better than less, right? We're all adults here.
    - em-bee 3y ago
      We're all adults here well, that is under dispute. if we were, then we would not have to deal with spam.
      - asow92 3y ago
        Touché, although, I'd still rather know than not know, ya know?
    - nickthegreek 3y ago
      It could very well be detrimental to release the list. More transparency does not necessarily mean better. Not everyone is an adult, not every adult behaves like an adult. As an adult myself, I have not seen mod behavior that would lead me to believe that there is some sordid conspiracy. Let alone start demanding this place start publishing their private lists that make this corner of the internet not a hellscape.
      - 3y ago
g42gregory 3y ago
How are we better off with this list being secret and being kept away from us? Are you saying that we are better off not knowing what’s in this list? Why?
- sanderjd 3y ago
  Because keeping this kind of list secret is an effective tactic in the battle against spam, and we are all better off with less spam.
  - g42gregory 3y ago
    Do you think professional spammers don't know they are on the list? I don't buy this for a second. They will immediately see that their posts are not showing up.
    - dangerlibrary 3y ago
      HN is known to use this tactic with comments, no reason to suspect they don't also use it for submissions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_banning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_banning
      - g42gregory 3y ago
        Are you saying that professional spammers don't know about shadow banning? All they have to do is to see if their posts are showing up without login (they won't).
        dangerlibrary 3y ago
        You and I have no idea how HN spam detection works - that's literally what you appear to be frustrated about. Maybe they detect that the person is visiting from the same set of IPs and show the post even while logged out. (I strongly suspect that similar measures are in place to prevent bigco employees from mass upvoting their latest press release.) Maybe they use browser fingerprinting somehow. Ultimately it doesn't matter - dang et al. are going to do what seems to work for them to reduce their own workload and keep this place working as they want it to. If you don't like it there are many unmoderated forums to participate in.
idiotsecant 3y ago
I think the 'free speech bros' characterization is this particular case might even be overly charitable, considering that OP appears to have created this account solely to make this post. I suspect they may lean more toward commercial interests and less toward ideological ones.
- kordlessagain 3y ago
  Things improve by banging on them periodically and seeing what falls off. There's a difference between unethical behavior and just pushing the limits of something with the hope it is improved. Then there's flat out trolling...
sigmoid10 3y ago
Depends on what you are looking for. Less moderated sites like 8chan drift heavily to the extreme political right and even into illegal stuff, but if that's your cup of tea you'll find a pretty active community there. It's just the liberal and scientific sites that need to weed out the crackpots, but that is an endless uphill battle.
- hotdogscout 3y ago
  My concern is liberal and scientific communities have a history of looking the other way at Marxist violence. I wish I didn't need to choose which genocide deniers I'll have to cater to.
  - belltaco 3y ago
    Examples?
    - hotdogscout 3y ago
      Criticism of the USSR being taboo in academia. https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/11/book-review-chronicles-of-wasted-time/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/11/book-review-chronicles... Noam Chomsky denying the Bosnian Genocide (among many) despite being extremely respected in academia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide https://youtu.be/VCcX_xTLDIY https://youtu.be/VCcX_xTLDIY
Pannoniae 3y ago
From what I've noticed, free speech advocacy isn't really about "allowing everything" but more about not applying more censorship than what is necessary and not doing it arbitrarily. HN does quite well in this regard - there are principles in running the site which are adhered to and which are required to keep the community from deteriorating into social media-quality discourse. For example, banning someone only for not liking their views is obviously legal and permitted almost everywhere, but a site/forum doing that doesn't adhere to the principles of free speech then. Which they don't necessarily have to do, but that's what free speech advocates are fighting for - for more places to adopt the conduct of not doing that.
- joshstrange 3y ago
  > From what I've noticed, free speech advocacy isn't really about "allowing everything" but more about not applying more censorship than what is necessary and not doing it arbitrarily. That's a nice phrasing but it doesn't hold up to what I've seen at all. Everyone has a different definition of what is "necessary" and anyone that gets (shadow-)banned is going to scream "Censorship!". I've moderated communities and watched this happen enough times to know. There simply is no objective way to handle it, it's always going to subjective and there will always be false positives. The alternative is a hellscape. HN has rules it adheres to but if someone finds a loophole or continues to walk "right up to the line" they probably aren't going to be around for long. I tried moderating a community once completely to the "letter of the law" and it turned out horribly. People abused that and drove off people who were kind and had interesting things to contribute. What was left was a few people who stuck it out and a bunch of trolls who knew they could get away with it.
  - g42gregory 3y ago
    I think the alternative is not a hellscape. The alternative is a clear, specific, transparent, rule-based moderation. In particular, I think that it's best to control the "temperature" of the discussion (even if subjectively), but keep the topics of the discussion completely open. Why would people not be allowed to discuss certain things, if these things gain enough traction? Instead, you could just control the temperature: banning the usage of bad words, personal attacks, etc...
very_good_man 3y ago
X is now an attractive free-speech platform.
- joshstrange 3y ago
  I needed a good laugh, thank you for that. X is neither attractive nor is it a free-speech platform.
  - very_good_man 3y ago
    Wrong.
local_issues 3y ago
[flagged]
logicalmonster 3y ago
This is a straw man argument. The issue isn't the potential presence of moderation, but the potential lack of transparency and the problems that could bring. Good systems are designed to work by taking into account human weaknesses. The current HN system doesn't do this.
- sshine 3y ago
  What human weaknesses does the current HN system not take into account?
  - wmf 3y ago
    The weaknesses of the (sole?) moderator. I'm not personally concerned about dang, but if you want a social media platform that has its own judiciary you could try Facebook or Threads.
- EA-3167 3y ago
  Transparency sounds nice, but in practice doesn't that just mean, "Teaching the bad actors how to be better at what they do?" Maybe that works for a giant like Facebook, but how can it work on a site with very few dedicated mods? What about the experience of using this site would be improved by that transparency? Compare those pros to the known cons and make a case.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    >What about the experience of using this site would be improved by that transparency? - I'd know what not to post and not waste my time using that source if I want to share content here. - If it's breaking news I can find an alternative source, and if it was removed than I can argue I used an alternative source because the primary source is banned. - If a major site is banned, peer review can at least start a dialouge to understand why that site is banned. It may not result in a change but a site that seeks to "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" should also be willing to indulge in the curiosity of how the site is run. If we stopped doing things in fear of bad actors, the internet would have long shut down.
somethingreen 3y ago
I do agree that in general case heavy moderation is preferable and most shitty communities are shitty because of too little moderation, not to much. But the rest of your reasoning gets destroyed by the fact that 4chan is, despite its age, infamy and continuous slide into lunacy, still an order of magnitude more popular website than HN and for a number of purposes, still the best community on the internet.
- PawgerZ 3y ago
  Can you explain what makes you see 4chan as "for a number of purposes, still the best community on the internet." The only purpose I can see being argued for is porn. For what other purposes is 4chan the best community? What makes 4chan the best community in these instances?
  - somethingreen 3y ago
    4chan maintains an up to date brief snapshot of internet consensus on represented topics. If I'm not interested in reading walls of text, watching 20 minute youtube essays, trying to discern genuine review from blog spam or infomercial, or doing 3 pass statistical analysis on rating aggregator as it's being brigaded by 3 different parties, and just want to find out what's good/bad/current - I don't really know any other place to go.

johnnyanmac 3y ago

I'm not even sure if I can name 67,000 websites, so it's still a shocking number. Simultaneously, it does slightly worry me that the list isn't published should I end up submitting a "legitmate" link that is never seen.

archo 3y ago
"About 67k” sites are banned For numerical context, I just looked up a list of current 'unique porn domains' which numbers 53,644. Edit: Add; An additional 209,626 unique domains for adware, malware, tracking. etc.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

kyleyeats 3y ago

What's a free speech bro?

jjoonathan 3y ago
Me, before I saw forum after forum after forum fall to the Nazi Bar Problem. (The term is newer than my formative experiences, but it's the best concise explanation of the dynamic I know.)
- joshstrange 3y ago
  I think a good number of us here, myself included, fell for this trap at some point. It appeals to the "simple solutions" part of our brains and is very black/white thinking. Thankfully most of us grew out of it, others... well yeah.
  - jjoonathan 3y ago
    I wouldn't call it a "trap," I think fairness and simplicity are perfectly reasonable goals to aspire to. It's just that in this case I have seen an abundance of evidence that people start to jump ship long before a max-fair judicial process starts to correct the course, so it is a highly unfortunate fact of the universe that a good captain must have an itchy trigger finger on the ban button with all the false positives and collateral damage that entails.
vkou 3y ago
Charitably? Someone who believes that because we can't tell some kinds of good speech from some kinds of bad speech, we should give up trying. It makes about as much sense as eating a moldy blue cheese once, enjoying it[1], and deciding that from now on, you won't turn your nose at eating whatever putrescent, rotting garbage is put in front of you, regardless of how sick it makes you. ---- Less charitably? Someone who can very much tell the difference between good and bad speech, but is cynically promoting bad speech, for selfish reasons. [1] Despite a general understanding that moldy food is not suitable for eating.
- kyleyeats 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - vkou 3y ago
    1. I've never once mentioned gender, I don't think that's a very good-faith interpretation of my response. 2. If you're actually confused on this subject, and are asking in good faith, I would recommend starting your research with the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance It will provide you with a rough frame of taking this argument to an extreme, by demonstrating that various groups of people need to set some kind of non-zero, practical limits for behaviours they permit. This particular group of people sets very particular, practical limits for those behaviours, enforced by the moderation team.
    - kyleyeats 3y ago
      You don't think 'bro' is gendered? It was a charitable interpretation. You think it's the permissible form of sexism. The paradox of tolerance is what I'm operating off of too. My conclusion is that you can't hate the hateful without being hateful yourself. What's your conclusion? That you're always automatically on the right side so it's okay to be intolerant? Where's the paradox for you? It's a 'you can't have your cake and eat it too' thing. What are you giving up, exactly? You shift very subtly from talking about beliefs to behaviors here. I'm specifically asking about beliefs, because the behavior in question here is the expression of beliefs. You're speaking out here against a group. Why shouldn't you be deplatformed? Why should we tolerate your intolerance?
sorokod 3y ago
I'll give this a shot: An XXX bro is someone who aggressively promotes XXX as a common good while actually motivated by promotion of a narrow agenda. Often associated with individuals that know next to nothing about XXX
Pyramus 3y ago
From what I've learned here on HN someone who thinks that "free speech" is absolute - their right to free speech outshines the personal rights of others. So instead of discussing where my rights end and your rights start, they will argue that no line should be drawn. In addition, from what I understand, they seem to think that democracy is a consequence of "free speech", not the other way around.
- theultdev 3y ago
  How does free speech infringe on other's rights? If you include spam, well that's not speech, usually not even by humans. Spam is a form of censorship by [D]DoS. If you include threats, well that's an action, not speech, and it's illegal, because of the action.
  - cmh89 3y ago
    Threats are by definition not an action.
  - Pyramus 3y ago
    Not sure I understand your post, both spam and threats are speech (at least in the US), so maybe something was lost in translation? Here are some of the limits of free speech in the US: > Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, false statements of fact, and commercial speech such as advertising. Defamation that causes harm to reputation is a tort and also an exception to free speech. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_ex... And here some examples from Germany (translated via DeepL): > the protection of personal honour against insult or defamation, the disclosure of information classified as secret, the limits of morality and the protection of minors, the limits of public safety, unfair competition by discrediting the goods or services of a competitor, the unauthorised disclosure of copyrighted information, racial discrimination https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meinungsfreiheit#Grenzen_(Schranken)_der_Meinungsfreiheit:_Art._5_Abs._2_GG https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meinungsfreiheit#Grenzen_(Schr...

asow92 3y ago

Not disagreeing with you necessarily, although, how do we know we're better off for it if we don't know what's on the list?

nickthegreek 3y ago
You don't and they are under no obligation to provide this list. It is not clear to me that providing the list would be constructive either. A good witch hunt will at least point out a plausible witch.
- asow92 3y ago
  > It is not clear to me that providing the list would be constructive I agree, it can't be clear unless you know what's on the list. More transparency is better than less, right? We're all adults here.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    We're all adults here well, that is under dispute. if we were, then we would not have to deal with spam.
    - asow92 3y ago
      Touché, although, I'd still rather know than not know, ya know?
  - nickthegreek 3y ago
    It could very well be detrimental to release the list. More transparency does not necessarily mean better. Not everyone is an adult, not every adult behaves like an adult. As an adult myself, I have not seen mod behavior that would lead me to believe that there is some sordid conspiracy. Let alone start demanding this place start publishing their private lists that make this corner of the internet not a hellscape.
    - 3y ago

g42gregory 3y ago

How are we better off with this list being secret and being kept away from us? Are you saying that we are better off not knowing what’s in this list? Why?

sanderjd 3y ago
Because keeping this kind of list secret is an effective tactic in the battle against spam, and we are all better off with less spam.
- g42gregory 3y ago
  Do you think professional spammers don't know they are on the list? I don't buy this for a second. They will immediately see that their posts are not showing up.
  - dangerlibrary 3y ago
    HN is known to use this tactic with comments, no reason to suspect they don't also use it for submissions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_banning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_banning
    - g42gregory 3y ago
      Are you saying that professional spammers don't know about shadow banning? All they have to do is to see if their posts are showing up without login (they won't).
      - dangerlibrary 3y ago
        You and I have no idea how HN spam detection works - that's literally what you appear to be frustrated about. Maybe they detect that the person is visiting from the same set of IPs and show the post even while logged out. (I strongly suspect that similar measures are in place to prevent bigco employees from mass upvoting their latest press release.) Maybe they use browser fingerprinting somehow. Ultimately it doesn't matter - dang et al. are going to do what seems to work for them to reduce their own workload and keep this place working as they want it to. If you don't like it there are many unmoderated forums to participate in.

idiotsecant 3y ago

I think the 'free speech bros' characterization is this particular case might even be overly charitable, considering that OP appears to have created this account solely to make this post. I suspect they may lean more toward commercial interests and less toward ideological ones.

kordlessagain 3y ago
Things improve by banging on them periodically and seeing what falls off. There's a difference between unethical behavior and just pushing the limits of something with the hope it is improved. Then there's flat out trolling...

sigmoid10 3y ago

Depends on what you are looking for. Less moderated sites like 8chan drift heavily to the extreme political right and even into illegal stuff, but if that's your cup of tea you'll find a pretty active community there. It's just the liberal and scientific sites that need to weed out the crackpots, but that is an endless uphill battle.

hotdogscout 3y ago
My concern is liberal and scientific communities have a history of looking the other way at Marxist violence. I wish I didn't need to choose which genocide deniers I'll have to cater to.
- belltaco 3y ago
  Examples?
  - hotdogscout 3y ago
    Criticism of the USSR being taboo in academia. https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/11/book-review-chronicles-of-wasted-time/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/11/book-review-chronicles... Noam Chomsky denying the Bosnian Genocide (among many) despite being extremely respected in academia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide https://youtu.be/VCcX_xTLDIY https://youtu.be/VCcX_xTLDIY

Pannoniae 3y ago

From what I've noticed, free speech advocacy isn't really about "allowing everything" but more about not applying more censorship than what is necessary and not doing it arbitrarily. HN does quite well in this regard - there are principles in running the site which are adhered to and which are required to keep the community from deteriorating into social media-quality discourse. For example, banning someone only for not liking their views is obviously legal and permitted almost everywhere, but a site/forum doing that doesn't adhere to the principles of free speech then. Which they don't necessarily have to do, but that's what free speech advocates are fighting for - for more places to adopt the conduct of not doing that.

joshstrange 3y ago
> From what I've noticed, free speech advocacy isn't really about "allowing everything" but more about not applying more censorship than what is necessary and not doing it arbitrarily. That's a nice phrasing but it doesn't hold up to what I've seen at all. Everyone has a different definition of what is "necessary" and anyone that gets (shadow-)banned is going to scream "Censorship!". I've moderated communities and watched this happen enough times to know. There simply is no objective way to handle it, it's always going to subjective and there will always be false positives. The alternative is a hellscape. HN has rules it adheres to but if someone finds a loophole or continues to walk "right up to the line" they probably aren't going to be around for long. I tried moderating a community once completely to the "letter of the law" and it turned out horribly. People abused that and drove off people who were kind and had interesting things to contribute. What was left was a few people who stuck it out and a bunch of trolls who knew they could get away with it.
- g42gregory 3y ago
  I think the alternative is not a hellscape. The alternative is a clear, specific, transparent, rule-based moderation. In particular, I think that it's best to control the "temperature" of the discussion (even if subjectively), but keep the topics of the discussion completely open. Why would people not be allowed to discuss certain things, if these things gain enough traction? Instead, you could just control the temperature: banning the usage of bad words, personal attacks, etc...

very_good_man 3y ago

X is now an attractive free-speech platform.

joshstrange 3y ago
I needed a good laugh, thank you for that. X is neither attractive nor is it a free-speech platform.
- very_good_man 3y ago
  Wrong.

local_issues 3y ago

[flagged]

logicalmonster 3y ago

This is a straw man argument. The issue isn't the potential presence of moderation, but the potential lack of transparency and the problems that could bring. Good systems are designed to work by taking into account human weaknesses. The current HN system doesn't do this.

sshine 3y ago
What human weaknesses does the current HN system not take into account?
- wmf 3y ago
  The weaknesses of the (sole?) moderator. I'm not personally concerned about dang, but if you want a social media platform that has its own judiciary you could try Facebook or Threads.
EA-3167 3y ago
Transparency sounds nice, but in practice doesn't that just mean, "Teaching the bad actors how to be better at what they do?" Maybe that works for a giant like Facebook, but how can it work on a site with very few dedicated mods? What about the experience of using this site would be improved by that transparency? Compare those pros to the known cons and make a case.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >What about the experience of using this site would be improved by that transparency? - I'd know what not to post and not waste my time using that source if I want to share content here. - If it's breaking news I can find an alternative source, and if it was removed than I can argue I used an alternative source because the primary source is banned. - If a major site is banned, peer review can at least start a dialouge to understand why that site is banned. It may not result in a change but a site that seeks to "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" should also be willing to indulge in the curiosity of how the site is run. If we stopped doing things in fear of bad actors, the internet would have long shut down.

somethingreen 3y ago

I do agree that in general case heavy moderation is preferable and most shitty communities are shitty because of too little moderation, not to much. But the rest of your reasoning gets destroyed by the fact that 4chan is, despite its age, infamy and continuous slide into lunacy, still an order of magnitude more popular website than HN and for a number of purposes, still the best community on the internet.

PawgerZ 3y ago
Can you explain what makes you see 4chan as "for a number of purposes, still the best community on the internet." The only purpose I can see being argued for is porn. For what other purposes is 4chan the best community? What makes 4chan the best community in these instances?
- somethingreen 3y ago
  4chan maintains an up to date brief snapshot of internet consensus on represented topics. If I'm not interested in reading walls of text, watching 20 minute youtube essays, trying to discern genuine review from blog spam or infomercial, or doing 3 pass statistical analysis on rating aggregator as it's being brigaded by 3 different parties, and just want to find out what's good/bad/current - I don't really know any other place to go.