> To take away people’s freedom of expression due to the revenue model is arbitrary and inconsistent with a free, advanced society.
This is the rhetorical slight of hand due to which any meaningful discussion of this topic is impossible on Hacker News. I talk about a lack of moderation and editorial work and you reply about "taking away peoples freedom of expression".
Put another way, 30 years ago it was not considered a limit on your freedom of expression if you couldn't get your conspiracy theory published in any news paper. Today you argue/feel like it is a limit on your freedom of expression if you can't publish it on social media.
> these gatekeepers are themselves biased and unable to know the “truth” in most situations as there is a debate about what is the truth.
First, it is not always true that there is a debate about what is the truth. Secondly, if there is only one gatekeeper (e.g. the state) this is obviously detrimental to discourse. But if there is a multitude of gatekeepers, and if there is a strong culture of accepting high quality divergent opinions, it is not.
> Stifling debate through this filter is detrimental to discourse
Non sequitur! You assume that the gatekeepers will control by alignment with their own opinion, rather than by quality. That's a danger, but there are mechanisms against it. If there is a healthy landscape of publishers this is something that can be demonstrated and will become known because competing publishers have an interest in exposing this.
(If all your media is owned by Murdoch you have a problem anyway).
> It is generally unscientific and authoritarian, which history (very recent history at that) has proven quite clearly.
What historical precedence are you thinking about with this?
I think science is an excellent example, and as a scientist I am well familiar with scientific discourse, and how it functions. It does absolutely _not_ function as a free for all. First of all, if you can't get your stuff published in a reputable journal nobody will take you serious. Generally to be part of the scientific discourse you are expected to demonstrate solid understanding of the underlying material. You will not get to speak at a conference unless you have demonstrated this to a number of reputable scientists who will vouch for you in the program committee.
What this comes down to is simply this: A healthy discourse in which the best ideas win and new ideas can be tried out requires structure. In a free for all, there is no guarantee that the best idea wins, in fact you would expect the most easily amplified and persuasive idea to win. Ease of amplification will depend on the medium and humans can be persuaded of any number of things that are blatantly untrue rather easily.
We require so much structure in the scientific enterprise to guard against our own individual vanity and fallibility.
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As an aside, something I have been meaning to read into more deeply but haven't looked at yet very much:
[Jürgen Habermas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Habermas) has written extensively about the prerequisites for a discourse to work well, long before social media blew things wide open. I am sure there are plenty of thinkers that have tried to develop these ideas further into the contemporary setting.
> His most known work to date, the Theory of Communicative Action (1981), is based on an adaptation of Talcott Parsons AGIL Paradigm. In this work, Habermas voiced criticism of the process of modernization, which he saw as inflexible direction forced through by economic and administrative rationalization.[24] Habermas outlined how our everyday lives are penetrated by formal systems as parallel to development of the welfare state, corporate capitalism and mass consumption.[24] These reinforcing trends rationalize public life.[24] Disfranchisement of citizens occurs as political parties and interest groups become rationalized and representative democracy replaces participatory one.[24] In consequence, boundaries between public and private, the individual and society, the system and the lifeworld are deteriorating.[24] Democratic public life cannot develop where matters of public importance are not discussed by citizens.[25] An "ideal speech situation"[26] requires participants to have the same capacities of discourse, social equality and their words are not confused by ideology or other errors.[25] In this version of the consensus theory of truth Habermas maintains that truth is what would be agreed upon in an ideal speech situation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideal_speech_situation