[bell-cot]

> A text-heavy, newsletter-based site that reads like a cross between a neighborhood internet mailing list and a small-town newspaper’s letters-to-the-editor section, Front Porch Forum seems an unlikely candidate to outcompete the big social media platforms. It has achieved critical mass in the Green Mountain State not by embracing the growth hacks, recommendation algorithms and dopamine-inducing features that power most social networks, but by eschewing them.

> While most tech giants view content moderation as a necessary evil, Front Porch Forum treats it as a core function. Twelve of its 30 full-time employees spend their days reading every user post before it’s published, rejecting any that break its rules against personal attacks, misinformation or spam.

> The process is slow and laborious, but it seems to work. Front Porch Forum is the highest-scoring platform ever on New_ Public’s “Civic Signals” criteria, which attempt to measure the health of online communities.

Tiny, not quickly scalable, and probably not profitable enough to make anyone even slightly rich.

But very good for human beings.

What are your priorities?

[aredox]

Twitter, Facebook & co could have hired millions of people and paid them magnanimously with the billions they make to scale moderation up. (Billions are really huge sums of money that people can't really fathom)

Instead they choose not to, and let the parts of the internet they cornered enshitify and pollute the rest of society.

Ironically had they done so, they would have now far more data to train moderation AI on. Instead they only have haphazard data

[gruez]

>Twitter, Facebook & co could have hired millions of people and paid them magnanimously with the billions they

Paying "millions" of people with "billions" of dollars means each person is getting paid $1k. That's below poverty levels of income, not "magnanimously" by any sane definition.

[from-nibly]

Also twitter is not profitable. It has negative money to play with.

[inglor_cz]

"Twitter, Facebook & co could have hired millions of people and paid them magnanimously with the billions they make to scale moderation up."

Nope, run the calculator again. Twitter is barely profitable even with current staff (and your proposal would literally multiply that staff thousandfold). Facebook is a bit better off, but you can't make enough money on ads to support good moderation for a global chatbox of a billion users speaking hundreds languages. Even at a ratio of 1 moderator per 100 users, the payroll would dwarf Meta's yearly revenue.

[everybodyknows]

What are the founder's priorities going to be when they're a few years older and wearier, and still can't afford a second home in some warm climate?

[mplanchard]

It’s a public benefit corporation, so there’s some limitation on what can be done with it. That said, I think their goal is just to continue to make something useful for the community, and continue their lives here when they retire.

I know it’s crazy to the silicon valley mindset, but a lot of people are happy making enough money to be comfortable, running or working in a sustainable local business, and being a part of the fabric of their community.