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[return to "The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News"]
1. romaae+Ge[view] [source] 2019-08-08 12:43:32
>>lordna+(OP)
Hacker News is a well-moderated community, but it's illustrative to see where Hacker News fails at moderation. While Hacker News is great at protecting the community from disruptive individuals, it tends to fall down when protecting unpopular individuals against the community turned mob.

I support Hacker News moderating itself however it chooses. However, if we are looking at it as a moderation model for large, open, non-editorial platforms (Youtube, Facebook) -- which I believe should all be covered under public accommodation law -- it clearly fails. And even if when we are looking at ostensibly neutral, publicly-orientated sites like newspaper comment boards, it fails.

Hacker News moderation is not appealable, not auditable, does not have bright line rules, and there are no due process rights. It simply does not respect individual rights.

So while this moderation method succeeds for Hacker News, and perhaps should become the model for small private sites, we should not try to scale it internet-size companies. Platform companies (Google, Facebook, Twitter) and backbone companies (ISPs, Cloudflare!) need a different set of rules geared towards protecting individual rights and freedoms instead of protecting a community.

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2. raxxor+Um[view] [source] 2019-08-08 13:44:40
>>romaae+Ge
I completely agree, although I like moderation here since it is actually very accepting and I might just have another definition for it than the author of the article.

Another example where moderation works well is stackexchange. I think a Q&A sites needs strict moderation to be able to stay on topic.

I think what Google is doing right now is reprehensible for example. Ghosting content because it is controversial and therefore coincidentally bad for advertising leaves a very bad taste.

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