Banning hate communities does work though [0]. I assume that the results are similar for twitter and facebook. "Hateful" Reddit or FB communities also don't allow "free speech". The moderators will ban people who go against the grain. There is no free exchange of ideas or disputing as if you're going against the grain you'll just get banned from that community (but not the platform). As such, either the platforms allow the hateful communities to just exist in their 'safe space silo' or they de-platform them.

[0] http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf

I'm being censored on Reddit myself.

I'm not really sure why exactly. I suspect it has to do with having a NSFW tag on my account (that I didn't put there) that I'm afraid to turn off, because of the warning that's next to that button and it doesn't explain what "swearing" is exactly and if I turn it off and write "fuck" I might get banned.

My account provides a lot of help to other people, it's highly valued by the community, I have loads of karma, I've paid for quite a bit of server time by the rewards I've received.

But you can't search on my username, it won't show up (not even if you have NSFW visibility turned on).

I'm not about politics, or covid or any hate stuff. I'm just there to try and help people with depression, anxiety and other issues. And I'm being censored for some reason.

So whatever they're doing, it's guaranteed to overreach and it's counter productive and who knows how much damage it does to society as a whole.

It's just that no one knows the severity of the damage the censorship does.

> I'm just there to try and help people with depression, anxiety and other issues.

Then it's mostly like because those topics aren't "advertiser friendly." Youtube did something similar during what was called the "adpocalypse." Advertisers don't want their products to be associated with the things you talk about, and reddit cares more about selling ads than helping you help people.

Servers and bandwidth are not free. People maintaining them need to eat too.

Computation, bandwidth and (open source) software is so cheap these days that it approaches free for many people (but not all). It's just a matter of coming up with a functioning model.

Ad supported is just one such model and it's not a very new one at that. Remember, you made this comment on server that was provided to you for free without the need of ad support.

Reddit-like software is open source, what's stopping anyone like you then? Talk is cheap.

>Ad supported is just one such model and it's not a very new one at that. Remember, you made this comment on server that was provided to you for free without the need of ad support.

There are job ads on HN, plus HN is even more highly moderated than Reddit. So it's a very bad example.

>Reddit-like software is open source, what's stopping anyone like you then? Talk is cheap.

That source code hasn't been updated in years.

>There are job ads on HN, plus HN is even more highly moderated than Reddit. So it's a very bad example.

If you add meaning to the words of others that is not there, then indeed, the examples are bad.

To bring up the moderation here, you're supposed to be nice and interpret the words of others positively. Your reply is bordering on malicious:

>Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

Oh so it does cost effort and money to hire people to make a site like Reddit, thought you said it's easy and cheap and approaches free. So how does Reddit recoup that money???

Anyway, I said Reddit-like, not Reddit. E.g. https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit

Old Reddit code is still pretty good.

>If you add meaning to the words of others that is not there, then indeed, the examples are bad.

>To bring up the moderation here, you're supposed to be nice and interpret the words of others positively. Your reply is bordering on malicious:

My point was that HN runs on ads and the financial goodwill of YC. If there's hate speech and misinformation on here then it would reflect badly on YC and YC backed companies. So we run into the exact same problem with Reddit and Youtube servers running with ad companies that don't want ads on a site with hate speech and misinformation.

If you want to set up or donate to such a site to prevent these influences, as you seem to think servers, bandwidth and maintenance is cheap. I think only talk is cheap, prove me wrong. What are the reasons for not creating such a site since you feel so strongly about censorship?