Hacker News Reader

Comment by matchagaucho | Hacker News Reader

> a lot of people will really really hate you.

That's an anticipated cost of removing hate.

It is, but it's also a cost for not removing hate, and also just for having a slightly different opinion on what constitutes hate than some of your users. When you have a billion users, there's going to be a lot of them that disagree with you on things.

Yes and reasonable people understand this and don't need censorship. Who would hate a platform for not removing people for just honestly disagreeing and talking? Inciting violence and cheating the system is a different story and the obvious edge of free speech

> Who would hate a platform for not removing people for just honestly disagreeing and talking?

A lot of people. And if your goal is quantity, not quality, those people are important, because they are who the investors give you money to build a site for.

The problem is "honest disagreement and talking" isn't. One person's honest disagreement is inciting violence, and with coded signals and dogwhistles, it's not a subject that everyone will agree on. Things that are clearly on one side or there other of the line aren't in question. It's more subtle stuff that can be argued either way, eg "When the looting starts, the shooting starts", where it gets more contentious.

Pretending it's all just honest disagreement is being naive.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com