Imagine that you run HN. Imagine that I challenge your beliefs and worse, that I provide proof on a regular basis. So you (the not-trying-to-be-evil admin) lab

Imagine that you run HN. Imagine that I challenge your beliefs and worse, that I provide proof on a regular basis. So you (the not-trying-to-be-evil admin) label me as toxic. You think up some way that what I am posting is illegal. You tried banning people in the past, but that made them angry and they came back with multiple alternate accounts (alts,) so you mix deprecating many of my posts to the unseen bottom of feeds and shadow banning other posts. This lowers the level of disagreement. Other moderators follow suit, until the whole HN forum is full of people who agree with the party line. At that point, HN is dead. And this is what we want. We all want the world to agree with us. I want a forum of autistic tech nerds who distrust authority and just want to be contributing members of society who help others. So I might use sneaky tricks to limit pro-cop and pro-socialism posters. They would feel like the whole Internet had died when their favorite forums were full of anti-cop libertarians who believed in the individual right to keep and bear suitcase nukes. I've been there as a pro-liberty responsibility person. The reality might be that 90% of people agree with me, but the sneaky moderator tricks make it impossible to know. If you want real change, mandate several things: 1. Anything moderated must list the reason it was moderated and a real human mist sign the moderation. For example, if this post were hidden the moderator would have to say why (spam, NSFW, bad language, off topic, etc) and include their real name. 2. A notice must be sent by email when moderation happens. So I would get an email explaining what post was moderated by who, why, and how to appeal. A permalink to the post must be included. No generic notifications would be allowed. 3. Anyone can easily appeal a moderation decision by filling out a web form that must accept 10,000 characters or more in each field. If any part of the moderation is incorrect, the post must be given a permanently promoted placement. 4. A right to sue in federal small claims court over inaccurate moderation that is not corrected within 12 hours. Cases should be prepared and filed online so that the other side has time to respond. The plaintiff gets to respond to the defenses response. After the sides go back and forth a few times the judge rules. 5. The right for everyone to see all posts, including moderated ones, and to select what to see and not to see based on author, keywords, and reason for moderation. So, for example, I see the user JoeBlow was moderated down for an insightful post I agree with so I can permanently unmoderate his comments on my view of HN, even if the mods hate us both.