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Trolling and many other forms of online abuse may not be against any law but it is in the public interest to allow platforms to remove such content.

This initiative may turn out to be the opposite of what it claims to stand for.




> Trolling ... may not be against any law but it is in the public interest to allow platforms to remove such content.

Is that really true? When Slashdot was the popular "news for nerds" site, many site regulars intentionally set their threshold to -1 to read the troll posts, because they were often inventive and funny. Yes, a moderation system can filter them out for users who configure the site thusly, but plenty of people would resist banning them outright because they are occasionally enjoyable to read.


> it is in the public interest to allow platforms to remove such content

This is not always true, and that is the issue. If the government is going to, for instance, tell us we can't gather on public property, there has to be some way to guarantee that a digital commons will remain.


Let Poland run news.polishcombinator.com where they decide to not moderate anything not against Polish law then

Are we going to have dang explain how any post he moderates violates Polish law? What about what he's moderating which isn't illegal in Poland?


Nobody seemed to care too much here about these issues when the gdpr was shoved into the faces of everybody.


Lots of people were wary of the GDPR. But "don't track our population" is streets ahead of "don't moderate content"

To be clear I'm not too worried about this. It seems like unenforceable policy


When the livelihood of those businesses depends entirely on their ability to track their users to deliver better ads, I would say that’s so much worse than letting conservative people express themselves freely.


In what sense is a private commercial website public space?


Some judges have hinted that it effectively is:

https://harvardlawreview.org/2017/11/packingham-v-north-caro...

Ultimately, though, I think the jury is still out.


If gathering in public space is gone we have bigger problems than wifi not working.


the ruling party has very much in common with the GOP, so much so that the default assumption should be that the opposite is the intent.


This can, and IMHO should, be addressed the way HN does it (at least by default): content that's downvoted is not visible by default, but not actually removed.


Yep. It would be illegal for dang to remove low-value or irrelevant posts.


What its claiming to stand for and what its intended use are not mutually exclusive.


It will be great for spammers.




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