These would be table stakes. They would only indicate that America is moving in another direction than currently.

The rest of the world would then take a wait and watch approach.

Besides, even getting to that point would need to mean that this situation would not arise again.

Size isnt a predictive metric for community. It’s great for ad revenue.

The point being made is that communities maintain high signal to noise ratios by adding effort filters.

Thank you! Didn’t know that, and it changed my position

Eh - it IS what most users want.

In the same way people want to be fit.

There are 3 horsemen of Internet forums, one of them is topics with a low barrier to entry.

At that point anyone can speak up, and their opinion takes up as much screen real estate and reading time (often less reading time) than a truly informed take.

By putting effort barriers in place, it forces a fitness test that most users (and bots) fail.

Another subreddit which has strong rules is r/badeconomics. I didn’t know about neutralnews, so thank you for giving me another example to add to the list.

Yes and no.

In the most simple sense - Yes, it is the content that matters.

In the more practical sense - cognitive and emotional resources are limited and our brains are not content agnostic.

We have different behaviors, expectations and capacities for talking to machines and talking to humans.

For example, if I am engaging with a human I can expect to potentially change their minds.

For a machine? Why bother even responding. It’s of no utility to me to respond.

Furthermore, all human communication comes with a human emotional context. There are vast amounts of information implied through tone, through what we choose not to say. Sometimes people say things in one emotional state that is not what they would say on another occasion.

To move the conversation forward, addressing the emotional payload behind the words used, matters more than the words used themselves.

There are a myriad reasons why humans are practically poorer for these tools.