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Comment by andreareina | Hacker News Reader

Past a certain size online communities without moderation invariably turn into a cesspool. Prohibiting moderation will basically give people carte blanche to be terrible to each other and make such communities impossible.

The dynamics of online and irl communities are different, you can't really compare them.

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I think the problem of platforms growing into a cesspool stems from the anonymity that people have on those platforms. Posting anonymously should not be protected, the platform should be OK to take down content that is anonymous. If you are registered (and I know this sounds like the Chinese system and probably violates some other freedoms or rights so makes it even more complicated) then your expression is protected (within reason which I mentioned above). The other problem I see with this idea is that LinkedIn is is not anonymous and the crap that people say on Linkedin blows my mind to the point I sometimes wonder how they can still be employable - it is not completely full of bad stuff, but the really bad stuff sticks out and I don’t remember all the good stuff on there. I guess LinkedIn is ok when compared to twitter or 4chan. The idea that online platforms that have protected expression will grow into a cesspool is sadly probably just a reflection of our society. I am pretty divided myself on this issue and on the registration I am not entirely comfortable with it but could live with it.

I see this as actually an argument against communities being that large rather than an argument for moderation in most cases. To some extent moderation has tamped down the natural limiting of community size caused by aholes, which has fed the viral growth of these tech companies to the point where they have massively excessive market power and ability to influence vast swaths of the population, which is really unhealthy for a democracy. I haven't figured out what the solution is yet, but to me limiting aholes and allowing communities to grow far beyond where they would have without that problem doesn't seem like a solution that causes massive problems of its own.

So we can’t have large communities because right wingers have developed a persecution complex about not being able to say the N word?

Edit: stop downvoting me, that’s censorship!! (/s)

That doesn't really contribute to the discussion and it is just wrong. What makes a placea cesspool is not the position someone is taking, but how they are taking that position and there are a small minority of people from all sides that cause this problem.

It's more that I am not convinced at all that these large communities are a good thing and I am not surprised that there seems to be a natural feedback mechanism to limit their size given the extremely long time we have been social creatures. The market power issue isn't the only issue with them, it's just the one that annoys me the most as an economist.

> What makes a placea cesspool is not the position someone is taking, but how they are taking that position

Disagree. You can have a cesspool of civility (Stormfront users were (are? Is the site still up?) quite civil on their forums… as long as you didn’t admit to being a non-white immigrant for example).

You can also have something like TopMindsOfReddit, which is all sarcasm all the time, yet still empathetic and wholesome.

I have never been to stormfront so I will have to take your word for it but your own explanation of their behavior betrays your point. Cesspool of civility is contradiction in terms that just means they discuss stuff you (and I) strongly disagree with cordially and respectfully. How they treat people who admit to not being white is what makes it a cesspool and also if their discussions go into things nearly universally agreed to be illegal (i.e. killing people, property destruction, etc). The other example is one of the exceptions where people know they are agreeing to suspend some aspect of civility that isn't related to something illegal when they enter the premises. Another example of that would be karen's diner chain in Australia.

Is this caused by the conversation or by the amplification? I don’t follow the cesspool on Twitter but Twitter seems intent on amplifying it to me despite my efforts to avoid. Their algorithms are the problem in my opinion.

The moderation of online communities dates back to the '80s, and predates consumer access to the internet, much less twitter.

It only takes a handful of shitheads running unchecked to ruin an online community.

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