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Yes: the guidelines of Hacker News promote civility, good faith, and logical argument, which drastically reduces the amount of trolling, flaming, and general vitriol.

Without moderation, forums quickly become unusable. If you disagreed, you'd be on 4chan, not Hacker News.

So I think you recognize the utility of at least some level of content moderation, which is a specific type of speech restriction.

View on HN

But I'm on HN and on 4chan, for different reasons. While I find no joy in the tone on 4chan, I love how more open minded a lot of people there are on certain topics (that aren't related to politics).

Ok, so you find that HN provides something that 4chan cannot, most likely as a result of its moderation, which suggests that limiting speech is, at times, useful and of value.

Fair?

But by going to 4chan, you are providing ad revenue allowing them to host pretty racist and hateful content. You may be there for the altruistic content, but you can’t separate it from the rest. Is the openness of the other content on 4chan worth that?

I don't use the Internet without strict ad blocking, so that's a no for me.

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