Moderation at scale, even HN scale, is hard!
That's a useful fiction, useful until it's not. This post[1] was on the front page briefly today. These people aren't obscure or powerless, they're billionaires, embedded in the current administration, etc.
> Then I started noticing something I couldn’t ignore. Smart people I respected—especially in cryptocurrency—were casually discussing feudalism. Not as history or provocation, but as serious proposals for organizing society. “Democracy and freedom are incompatible.” “Most people aren’t capable of self-governance.” “Elite overproduction is the problem—we educated too many people above their station.”
> These weren’t fringe cranks. Peter Thiel writing that democracy and freedom are incompatible. Curtis Yarvin publishing blueprints for corporate monarchy. An entire neo-reactionary apparatus in Silicon Valley while I optimized payment systems. And they were explicit: the democratic experiment failed, constitutional constraints prevent necessary action, most people should accept subordinate roles, the intelligent few should rule.
[1] https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/the-coming-clash-of-civ...
The panopticon is built on the technology and culture at the center of HN, so hopefully they have sympathy for my not being able to predict that the post would be flagged. I think it's important to understand and discuss the escalating technology-based erosion of our privacy and rights, but I'll guess we'll just do that at the monthly Antifa meetings. /s