Freenet/lbry/tor hidden sites all exists (and get used all the time) and it's 100% not required there at all. I hope at some point weird moralization of nudity will stop.
Even porn sites need moderation. Trying to stop sexual abuse and child pornography isn't weird moralization.
> and it's 100% not required there at all
I'm not super familiar with the darkweb, but I assume that darkweb platforms also have active moderation, even if it's only to keep griefers out. Pornography is not the only use case for moderation.
How does moderation of content prevent sexual abuse or CP? If anything I'd argue it creates more, because those that seek the images instead have to produce their own if they cannot find them.
While free forums on the darknet might get away with a tad more lax policies, if you’re a registered business hoping to make any money you won’t have a choice but to moderate in some way. At the very least it will be to follow your country laws, and more often than not your clients will require you to do so.
> you won’t have a choice but to moderate in some way
This is the way that moderation has been done in the past 10-15 years, but does it have to be? Why couldn't a platform provide user-level controls over what they see instead of making those decisions for them? Early forum software actually did somewhat of a good job of this, and I remember building phpBB extensions that enabled more user-level control. Even with this you can go from super granular to just a couple of primary options. It becomes a tagging/filtering mechanism on behalf of the client.
Edit: UGC platforms may discover that there's some value in finding what filtering options their users use.
> does it have to be?
In most cases moderation is less about what users want or don’t want to see, and more about what you want your platform to be.
For instance people are OK with product suggestions when they go on Amazon, but if your job posting site becomes an endless stream of Amazon links you’ll want to curb that. And perhaps your users find interesting products in all these links, but from your perspective it will kill your business (except if you pivot into becoming a product listing site of course)