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We see exactly this in real life. The more heavily moderated a forum is, the more popular it becomes. Open it as a free-for-all and let the abuse run wild, an

• AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > The more heavily moderated a forum is, the more popular it becomes. This is objectively false. The forums run by a tinpot dictator who excludes too many things that people want to see have zero users, not the most users. Many of the most popular forums became popular before they had any kind of strong moderation and only adopted it after they already had a lot of users. HN is one of the rare examples where the moderation was present from the beginning, a major reason it works is that it's a specialized site that doesn't target general audiences, and it's "popular" but not half as popular as 4chan. As a general rule people don't like spam, but if the place where their friends are has some spam, they're going to stay there while complaining about the spam. And, of course, they hate it when somebody excludes something that they want. But that might not get them to leave either, because network effects are powerful, even when they hate it. Twitter users have been calling it "the hellsite" for many years while continuing to be Twitter users. Which is why large general-purpose platforms need different algorithms for different people -- because different people want different things.