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Comment by tetris11 | Hacker News Reader

> In a Google Doc shared with the thread via social media, our hero explained how posting in SA's community had been an important part of his life, how he had done a lot of growing up and a lot of mental healing in the intervening 100,000 hours, and how he now regretted his life as an infamously abrasive poster.

It sounds like someone grew out of their 20s and mellowed out in their 30s. A tale as old as time.

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That could sum up SA as a whole. The culture there has shifted a lot over time, but not due to an influx of new users, it's the same people who have been posting for upwards of a decade and have (mostly) grown up. The founder Lowtax refused to grow up but, well, you know the story and now the site is under new management.

So, I didn’t know the story - turns out Lowtax passed - but in searching I found a bemusing internet history of how Lowtax’s “banning of hentai on SA [was] ‘The Archduke Ferdinand Assassination moment that lead to QAnon’”

https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/qro1ir/comment/...

The short version of events as I recall is that Lowtax was basically admin in absentia for years, only occasionally showing up to beg for money while the volunteer staff actually ran the show, until he was accused of domestic abuse by his then-partner which followed a pattern of similar accusations by his two previous partners. That led to a revolt by the users and other staff, which pressured Lowtax into selling the site to one of the other long time admins and parting ways. The new owner revealed that the site was in fact financially stable, contrary to Lowtaxes fearmongering, probably because he had been skimming donations for personal expenses. Then Lowtax killed himself a year later.

reading that wonderful history lesson reminded me

1. Once again why no other site tried the "one time entry" fee to limit spam. Doesn't even have to be 10 bux; I think 1 dollar would go a long way to filter out 90+% of low effort trolls. And if they make sockpuppets: cool. money and easy banning.

2. A tale as old as time, but never let your personal biases interfere with moderation. If you really don't like something, codify it immediately before it offshoots into new competition.

3. damn, even before industry caught up anime-goers were persistent.

Twitter. Most spam is by paying users

I'd argue it's also due to an outflow of problematic users, such as what birthed 4chan

I remain unconvinced that the outflow was limited to problematic posters, but I am not a first hand user

It rarely is, but you know what they say about nazis at a bar. Same thing applies here. Even if there's one extra step of ironic nazism -> real nazis finding good company.

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