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Comment by gorwell | Hacker News Reader

Oh please. Usenet was a free speech platform. IRC was a free speech platform. The 90s internet was a free speech ecosystem and the prevailing ethos was anti censorship. And guess what? It wasn't an endless hellscape. It was great, mostly.

We're just caught up in the middle of a moral panic and the church ladies from SNL have come out of the woodwork, flapping their arms about how everything is s/satanic/racist.

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If saying "good luck with your idea I don't like" is the expression of "moral panic" and church lady from SNL, then that seems like a rather mild panic. Compare that to legislative action to dictate the content of science and history classrooms on matters of race and sex.

I remember both of those platforms having problems with disgusting illegal content.

It certainly wasn't a big enough deal to prevent everyone else from enjoying the platform. Things worked out. There were problems here and there but by and large people discussed most topics with each other civilly and the system worked without any central authority approving each post.

Probably because they weren't platforms with the sole purpose of being a space for free speech. The problem with these new platforms and sites is that they are generally copies, worse than the originals, of larger platforms that have the only attraction of being free from moderation.

They only see this problem and try to solve it in the worst way. Accepting everything and everyone, offering a confusing experience, financially unattractive and often need to charge dearly for it.

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