I don't frequent social media aside from Hacker News. But Hacker News is great at moderation. Maybe it's a multiplier effect. Dang does a phenomenal job, and other people see and emulate. Lots of people like to keep this place a civil place.
Twitter is a bigger shop. But can something like that work too? I'm not sure Elon is familiar with HN, but if he were, I think it would serve him well to draw some inspiration from it.
I don’t think this model would work for Twitter at all.
HN has a very narrow scope and is moderated appropriately for that scope.
HN doesn’t provide users with their own platform- it provides then access to the HN platform (since nobody has their own timeline or followers, we’re just competing for the central “front page”.
While I respect Dang when he moderates the HN timeline, I would not be as happy if he moderated my own timeline so aggressively
As I said, I'm not familiar with other platforms, Twitter included. And I take it as a given that when two problems have vastly different scales, a solution for the small problem does not translate trivially to become a solution to the big problem.
But it can provide some guidance.
What I like about HN is the guidelines [1]. They are a 700-word very thoughtful version of "be nice".
Could this work on Twitter? I don't know. I don't even know if Twitter has karma. But I think "be nice" is a good thing to have on any social platform.
Twitter is a bigger shop. But can something like that work too? I'm not sure Elon is familiar with HN, but if he were, I think it would serve him well to draw some inspiration from it.