What would Hacker News be? If someone posts spam comments on HN are the mods allowed to delete them? If someone writes a false comment is HN liable for that false comment?
That’s a good question. Presumably you could draw some line to distinguish between small communities and enormous ones (tens of millions of monthly active users, for example), or distinguish between social media and forums.
All that would happen is the platform and the moderation would be separated, and the moderation optional. There would be a 4chan-like hacker news platform, and hacker news modlist that hides problematic comments.
Hacker news already operates like this in a small way with shadowbanned accounts. Users can choose whether to see shadowbanned comments or hide them from view, what level of censorship they prefer.
Platforms only being platforms wouldn't turn everything into spam and screeching. It just means you'd be able to see that if you wanted to.
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