> What? You asked my why my comments are about HN and not FB, and I said it's because up-thread a wider assertion was made about all shadowbanning, which is what we're talking about at this point.

You completely ignored the question. How can you know that shadowbanning did not negatively effect this community? You cannot know that. Where does the HN exist that never shadowbanned for you to draw your comparison from? This is opinion, not fact. But, I'll let you move the goalposts. HN is not nearly the size of FB however.

> People that do not like those steps, or the communities that develop, have the choice of exerting pressure on the people that run it or on other community members, or they can choose to go elsewhere.

Pressure was exerted, censorship continues. What recourse does one have for the largest social media company in the world? The left is outright giddy at this thought.

> HN is not a public resource.

Given that no login is required one could argue it is public, given that recent scraping judgement.

> It's a private resource that allows the general public. If you want to make a case that FB is special because it's so big and everyone is on it, that's one thing.

I do want to make that case, but not related to size. Any, ANY, forum or anywhere where discourse happens cannot censor anything but spam. Repeated messages, messages that are clearly marketing, etc. Instead you have individuals who are not qualified playing judge, jury and executioner. Judges recuse themselves when they can't be neutral. How many forum moderators do the same?

> But to expect that if I stand up a little forum with dozens of users to discuss specifics of care and restoration of the Datsun 240z and I'm contending a persistent forum spammer that's putting gratuitous messages about penis enlargement and I find that banner works for minutes but shadow banning seems to actually solve the problem in most cases, I think it's ridiculous to think that most the small community would be up in arms over how I was being deceitful to them about not showing them this spam.

Absolutely nobody but the scam artists will care about this type of censorship. But note that you're using marketing spam to justify censorship of others opinions.

> Why'd you even bother to post this? I half moment's thought would make it obvious that I'm talking about aligning a very specific subset of items, namely behavior, as I specifically stated.

You didn't change the outcome, we're all still the same.

> Communication is only possible with a shared understanding of some base. At the lowest level, that's generally language, but it can be extended to other norms to make communication easier and less error prone.

Like censorship? Yea that would certainly streamline things.

> It's not that they don't matter, it's that they don't matter in some contexts to some people, and are thus inappropriate.

And therefore we should censor them because they absolutely cannot be useful for anybody else? How about this one:

Someone's BS filter is tuned mostly OK, but they still need some work. You censor a false post and they miss an opportunity to do just this. What you're going to end up with is a bunch of people who can't think for themselves who require someone telling them exactly what to do and think. It's been known for a while that the left wants the population following exactly everything they say. And given that all things are cyclical we can easily see that it's a reversion to the style of gov the US came from. Whether or not you are knowingly complacent or not I'm not sure, but you're fighting for that style of government back.

> Does Joe Bob's weekly rant about whoever the current politician that has his ire is matter? Possibly. Does it matter and is it appropriate on a small car enthusiast forum? Nope, and he has no right to have it shown there, nor expectation that if he posts it there that others should see it, whether he thinks they do or not.

Discourse happens where discourse happens. And I doubt Joe Bob randomly spout out his opinions, usually someone would insert some slight reference in everyday communications. The left does this one a lot.

But by all means, let's use this to censor?