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Comment by untech | Hacker News Reader

I think the terms “Nazi”, “terrorist” and “propaganda” won’t help you, if you want to have a complex view of the world.

I really just mean actual self-described neo-nazis...

Well, for the audience of Russian highly regulated TV, news sites and social networks, the invasion of Ukraine was necessary because the poor neighbour was suffering under a regime of “actual self-described Neo-Nazis”. Russian Ministry of Defence even reports its daily results in terms of ”Neo-Nazis eliminated“. My parents are consumers of Russian media, and it is impossible to discuss the war with them, because they talk and think with these flexible terms like “Nazi”, “terrorist” and “propaganda”. And they are not unintelligent people.

I wish citizens of the free world would be more careful with their freedoms. Democracy and autocracy is a spectrum, and the slide towards dictatorship, from my experience, could be gradual and subtle.

I am a little confused by your point. I don't disagree, I just don't see it as dictatorial for people to be allowed to decide what happens in their communities. In fact, I think they only way any community can actually function is to have the right to exclude bad content and bad actors. That's true for a church or a book club or hacker news or facebook or anyone else.

Well, I agree that moderation is useful for communities. I disagree that moderation standards should be defined by a regulator. On reddit, different communities have different moderation policies. Same for various chat groups. And there are resources with no moderation, like anonymous boards. This is fine. If you don’t like moderation policy of your community, argue for a change or create a fork. But don’t involve the government in it.

I don't think the regulator should define moderation standards. I am not sure what gave you that idea?

That is not the current system OR the result of removing s.230. Though removing s230 would mean courts were much much more involved and moderations was much much heavier (or non-existent al-la 4Chan etc).

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