@dang does a pretty damn good job, and I'm surprised I don't see a lot more negatives about him 'censoring' things. Yet people even on hackernews blow a gasket at any censorship on fb, reddit, or twitter... I guess maybe because here is more topical and censoring is to keep things on-topic so they 'allow' that kind of censoring?

That's a good question. Lets say that we're mostly ok with the manifestation of moderation acted out by dang et al here at HN, and less positive about the moderation in other places like FB/reddit.

Given that as a backdrop, how would you characterize the important variables that affect the relative perception of these moderation approaches?

I'll start: 1. Well articulated rules/ethic. 2. Transparent moderation actions. 3. Few "hard lines": dang may step in to remind people of the rules as they approach the line. The precedence of rules is flexible and depends on the context.

4. The person interpreting the context and bending the flexible rules is good at perceiving the intangible essence of virtue.

5. There is a way to get in touch with the moderators, appeal any censorship and have a civil conversation to clarify any misunderstandings. Just like the good old forums in fact, where moderation was benevolent and tried its best to resolve issues.

Compare that to mainstream social media where moderation is a cost center, outsourced to people in atrocious working conditions with no good understanding of the subtleties of the language at hand or the topic being discussed, and has no incentive to make the platform better. The platform itself has no incentive to encourage good discussions and mediate conflicts, its only incentive is to keep people looking at ads and the mediocre moderation is just there to keep the law at bay. Any "good discussions" that arise anyway are just a side-effect.

Yeah, it's much harder to feel like you're being oppressed if you aren't being told your views are evil or stupid, but are instead being told that they're not relevant to the topic at hand. The lack of people posting views opposed to yours also means way less potential triggers for you to post your political views, which means things never spiral out of hand in the first place.

was thinking the same thing for the past few days! not going to rehash all that is going on, but, i came to realize that we needed good moderation on social medias. we needed it a long time ago.

now we blame the "cancel culture" because some are going into other's social media past to dig out stuff. but here's the thing. i saw most of these platforms grow. there were no good moderation.

instead ignorance and absurdity were often supported and even rewarded!

we wouldn't be here if good moderation had happened. now, we are struggling with who to hold accountable for the missed opportunity for moderating what went on social media. the damage is done.

we needed more moderation like we have here on HN!

The other day I when I saw different people were criticizing @dang alternatively for being a communist and a racist nazi, I knew he did a great job.

The problem is that people sometimes want to be nasty, hurtful or obtuse. This warning will not do anything because 1) people explicitly want to be noxious and 2) there is no consequence for breaking the rules anyway.