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2 years agoI mean, what this whole situation has shown us is the fragility that our reliance on that site creates. It would be a real mistake for us to go back at this point, because it means they (or their successors if they manage to actually sell the sinking platform) will eventually pull this stuff again. Trying to build a replacement community is a very difficult thing because of network effects, but this dramatic fracture has given us the opportunity to maybe pull it off.
So I see this as an attempt to create further disruption that prevents one of these alternate sites from solidifying as a true replacement, and little else.
I dunno. It’s hard to separate the two roles of mods. One role is in preventing abuse–posting illegal content, hate speech, etc. But another role is in policing the content for what does and does not fit a forum’s purpose. You can do the first and keep section 230 protection, but the second is inherently and inextricably editorial in nature, and you can’t do that without losing protection. And I don’t think the lines between these are well-enough defined to enable you to make them two separate jobs without getting into trouble. Like, a lot of communities allow a little self promotion, but not spam. Managing that is a ton of work, but probably can’t be a paid role because it’s a judgment call. That sort of thing.
It’s frustrating, because it’s pretty clear at this point that this is one kind of web site that we really want to have exist. But the laws around this are really janky, and trying to revise them is a problem because the debate around them is even stupider than the laws themselves.