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I completely understand these actions as it relates to spam or bot activity as all platforms must use moderation to provide a good user experience, but these moderation weapons are primarily used to silence alternative viewpoints and subject matter that does not agree with HN moderators.
Although moderators believe they are acting with good intentions, there are many consequences to portraying the HN platform as an “open” social news community, but secretly silencing opposing views.
The primary issue is creating a narrow filter bubble. Secondly, reinforcing narrow social, technological and political ideologies.
As a community we should keep open the discussion of how these moderation tools are silencing posts and the wider effect they have on HN readers who believe they are reading unfiltered user submitted and generated content.