First, this is what happens when moderation is removed from Twitter [1]. So Dom Lucre was in possession of CSAM that would literally land anyone else in jail for the mere possession of it (fuelling the rumors he is an FBI informant), watermarked it, posted it on Twitter and it was for for days.

That's who Elon unbanned.

Now if you've bought into the lie that Elon is a free speech absolutist, which he absolutely is not, you might consider that a good thing. Now take a look at a partial list of Twitter accounts Elon has banned [2]. This includes many journalists and a guy posting where his private plane is (from public information), many of whom were banned for simply hurting his feelings or calling out one of his lies.

[1]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgwa7z/twitter-elon-musk-dom...

[2]: https://observer.com/2022/12/elon-musk-suspend-twitter-accou...

Isn't Hacker News a generally decent place to discuss topics because of the reasonably high levels of moderation of topics and discussion?

No, orange reddit is pretty shit.

It’s a niche area of interest, I don’t enjoy it because of heavy moderation. My opinion is that it provides value by furthering knowledge of folks in engineering.

Heavy moderation is a technique that makes dang’s job easier by perpetuating rigorous standards and makes people police themselves. See Broken Window Theory.