[rhaksw]

Communities would get a good sense for the frequency if forums would simply disclose content moderation to the submitting users. Offending users would learn what's not allowed and share that with the community.

But today's forums frequently do not disclose moderation to submitting users, and that is why we are now seeing major court cases over 230, government-led censorship, etc.

[dang]

I don't know anything about other forums, but for the reasons why on HN we don't publish a full moderation log, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39234189 as well as the past explanations linked from there.

You can, however, always get a question answered. That's basically our implicit contract with the community.

[rhaksw]

Full moderation logs are different than showing submitters how their posts have been moderated.

On HN, my understanding is that you (moderators) can penalize stories without the submitter's knowledge. But if HN instead disclosed that penalty to the story's submitter, that would help this community communicate better.

As for how it works elsewhere, if a YouTube channel removes your comment, you won't know [1]. Same thing on Reddit, Facebook, and X. So while HN is relatively small, the practice of withholding content moderation decisions from submitters/commenters is widespread.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e6BIkKBZpg

[dang]

I'm sorry, but I think that would have the effect of making what is already a difficult job impossible. Even if most submitters saw that information and went "oh! well I guess that's that then," the number who would instantly fire off emails of protest would overwhelm our capacity to answer them.

Every submitter thinks their story deserves to make HN's front page, if not #1. Actually, that's not entirely true—the cleverest and most tasteful submitters are often the most humble. We have to go out of our way to try to find what they post because they're the last people who would ever send an email demanding attention.

But I can tell you from experience (81,556 emails and counting) that there are far more people who think their blog post ought to be #1 on HN than I could ever answer, and I can tell you what happens if one tries: many come back with a list of objections that is 3x longer than the entire conversation so far. The problem grows the more you feed it.

I want people to be able to get answers to their questions. No one would love it more than me if we could find some automated way of reducing that load while still answering people's questions. But so far every suggestion of how to do this sets off so many alarms in my body that I wonder if I'll sleep that night.

I'm afraid that might come across dismissive and I apologize if it does. It's just that the status quo already involves so much pressure that if I try to explain, I come across as a deranged beach ball that's been pinned deep underwater for 10 years.

[rhaksw]

Your comment isn't dismissive, but I do think users have a right to know where they've been moderated.

[pests]

Mat I ask why? Why do users have that right?

[rhaksw]

Thank you for the question. I can think of two reasons:

(1) You wouldn't want someone to secretly remove or demote your own commentary. But secretive content moderation is extremely common on today's major platforms. In order to be heard there, you would need to fight back against the practice, and you cannot effectively do that while keeping secrets yourself.

(2) Undisclosed content moderation does not express any kind of message, and therefore the platforms' use of it may not even be protected by the first amendment.

#2 is currently under discussion in a few cases before the Supreme Court:

https://twitter.com/rhaksw/status/1752367424303771948