Reddit’s fatal flaw is that subreddit mods are volunteers. Sometimes this works well when you get a knowledgable, benevolent individual in the position, but more often than not you get people who want to power trip.

Mods should be in-house, on payroll, and strictly bound to the network’s standards.

This should generally be less of an issue anyway in a system that actively penalizes the sorts of crudely expressed, un-nuanced posts that are typically social media’s bread and butter. Not being able to appeal to basal emotions (“it feels right” is a poor metric) and being required to substantiate views more intelligently takes the air out of a lot of fringe sails.

> moderation inevitably leads to exclusion

Yes, it has to, because trolls and haters are relentless. The choice of whether or not marginalized communities are allowed to ban abusive posters is fundamental because moderation resources are finite.

Of course, there are many who believe that marginalized communities should not be allowed to moderate posts and should be willing to absorb a constant onslaught of abuse as the price of existing.

One person's "trolls and haters" is another's dissenter. It is disturbing how quickly marginalized communities become echo chambers

Nah, much of the time a trolls and haters are just trolls and haters. Dissenters who want to taken seriously generally aren’t easily mistakable as trolls because they’re not there to try to get a rise out of the opposing side.

One also needs to keep in mind for spaces for marginalized in particular are more sensitive than typical because they have to keep their shields up at all times because of how much more likely attacks are. If making them feel like they can safely drop their shields is a goal, then incidents like people posting in an antagonistic and/or harassing manner needs to drop to background radiation levels.

Dissenters nonetheless get treated by the same system that treats trolls and haters, by the people they're dissenting from. If there's a system that site moderators can use to globally block trolls and haters, they also use it to block their dissenters. Every time. If there's a system where you can stop me replying to you, it'll get used by people selling snake oil to block people from replying saying "hey this is actually snake oil". Every time.

And so the "solution" is to give dissenters free rein and thus trolls and haters free rein as well, effectively deplatforming all but the most pugilistic amongst marginalized communities as those who don't want to spend their lives fighting flee the torrent of abuse. Whether you intend it or not, that's a fabulous scenario for both active haters and those who quietly prefer that the marginalized not exist.

But even after they flee, it won't be enough — the new platform where they took refuge, having become popular, must be stormed. Any room where the marginalized congregate must be filled with the din of hatred. In short, it is not enough for Musk-era Twitter to be Twitter — BlueSky must also become Twitter.

There might be no good solution. In that case, you can still implement the least bad solution, but it's better to know that it's merely the least bad, than to fool yourself into thinking it's good - in particular, knowing that it's not a good solution should make you more open to hearing other ideas.

BlueSky is already quite bad like old Twitter, though not like X. It's not filled with Nazis, but it is very bland and corporate with no substance.