Invoking 230 here is off-topic but reforming it the way you propose would destroy most communities, especially smaller niche ones. It will also bring down a wav

Invoking 230 here is off-topic but reforming it the way you propose would destroy most communities, especially smaller niche ones. It will also bring down a wave of massive censorship and moderation to sites that try to continue. In the real world when someone is a loud asshole people generally avoid them. They don't invite them to parties. They don't hang out with them. Online is no different. Communities overrun with loud assholes drive away normal users. Again a real-world analogy: what you are proposing is that Starbucks, as a business that caters to the public, should not be allowed (by law) to eject or ban someone who comes in and starts screaming obscenities because they think it is funny. If they attempt to regulate the speech of patrons then Starbucks becomes directly liable for everything their patrons say. There are only two outcomes: Starbucks goes out of business because trolls show up and annoy people who don't want to hang out in a loud coffee shop with super annoying people who harass them... or Starbucks prohibits talking in their store to avoid liability. I can also come up with many ways for bad faith actors to cause huge problems in your proposed scheme. Imagine a competing electric car maker paying shills to invade all the Tesla owner forums to get them shut down or harass everyone into leaving. Or imagine a rival political party doing the same. It isn't that difficult to create 100 bot accounts that flood every thread with non-spam posts that are nevertheless not useful content and not posted in good faith. For that matter HN's posting policies would be prohibited under your own rules. It wouldn't take long for the usefulness of this site to disappear in that case.