Yes absolutely. You do know that this social website uses "blanket censorship regardless of context" right? Shadow bans, rate limiting, etc. I am 100% sure Hacker News has automated tasks for identifying who to shadow ban and rate limit, since I've tested this with multiple accounts and other tools like changing IPs, etc. and also by contacting them for reasoning for their decisions. I think these are perfectly fine and acceptable ways for people to manage their private communities. My only caveat would be that you can't discriminate against protected classes. I would prefer that these rules be transparent, but I think that's a bit of a straw man for this discussion.
Managing private communities of tens of thousands of people require some disciplined rules in order for the entity's leaders to achieve their goals.
While I recognize that "private communities" have the ability to moderate and administer their communities whatever way they see fit (and subreddits [at least their initial iterations] certainly fit under this label), I do not agree that blanket censorship without contextual understanding is the right way to do things.
>My only caveat would be that you can't discriminate against protected classes
How do you define "protected classes", though? Is it your definition? The US Federal Government's? Who gets to make those decisions keeping in mind a niche subreddit (or even a full site like we are on here) will already have a very different demographic than the real world?
Not to mention, sorting and censoring people based on a classification that is outside of their control is quite a... controversial way to go about things.
>Managing private communities of tens of thousands of people require some disciplined rules in order for the entity's leaders to achieve their goals.
Establishing, enforcing, and maintaining "disciplined rules" should not, and do not need to, mean "shadow bans, rate limiting, etc". Certainly not without a human element capable of contextual analysis, at least.
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I disagree with you, but respect for explaining your beliefs.
>I do not agree that blanket censorship without contextual understanding is the right way to do things.
I don't agree with it either, but it's impossible to do this at scale without hiring a large number, relative to community size, to be full time paid moderators. We have to accept the reality that these free communities need automation in order to maintain order, or else they would cost lots of money.
>How do you define "protected classes", though?
This is a straw man and I'm not going to address it. You know exactly what I'm talking about.
Managing private communities of tens of thousands of people require some disciplined rules in order for the entity's leaders to achieve their goals.