> I dunno how well the former will survive with read-only access to the latter. I would not be sad to see it wither and die, though several decades of life on the Internet suggests that's all too unlikely to happen.

In my internet experience, it will be the fun, influential one, and the "civil" one will wither and die. The problem in this case was the abuse of the reporting system, it seems, not name-calling.

HackerNews benefits strongly (imho) from strong moderation.

Strong, principled, consistent, and effective.

Metafilter is way better than Voat. I concur that the less fun one will wither but no guarantee that's the civil one.

> I suspect that eventually the Fediverse will be divided into two major sections: places that are okay with "pissing people off" as a source of fun, and places that require basic adult civility at the price of, say, restricting your freedom to call an absolute stranger something vile.

Does that mean instances will enforce basic adult civility by preventing one from insulting, say, President Trump? He is by any reasonable standard an absolute stranger to the vast majority of users, who generally will have had absolutely no personal contact with him in any fashion. I don't care for the man's politics, but I also must admit I've never met him.

Have I missed something? Please, help me understand!