So basically classic Reddit. Let the votes matter. Let people decide a down vote threshold (hide posts for me below x number.)
And let all of us who want to see the show put that threshold to negative Infinity and let’s have some gosh dang fun!?
I’m kind of thinking it’s only a matter of time until someone incorporates the mod log and just reintegrates those messages into a continuous comment hierarchy. Kind of like how pie fed incorporates multiple instances into a single comment tree.
Why the extra steps? Comments are never really deleted you can go look them up. Seems pedantically silly.


My hypothetical bot army just down voted all your comments below the threshold, all your comments are deleted now.
You don’t have a problem with that?
This is a good example. Most spaces, (virtually all spaces) will consider that a form of vandalism. A similar but even more extreme example is a spam bot posting thousands of links to scam websites.
Some might be fine with that, and that’s up to each community. Some security honeypot-style communities probably benefit from allowing spam, for example.
Not really. I don’t need validation.
And I think that should be part of it. No numbers available for end users(admins would be able to, but ultimately the points wouldn’t matter beyond the threshold you set). Comments without numbers. Let the algo sort it out. Organic conversations without measure.
Sounds healthy almost.
What part of getting silenced by a bot army is organic?
My hypothetical bot army down voted your comments again, If you don’t need validation, you’ll have no issue deleting your comments?
And the “admins would be able to” is just moderation by a different name. Moderators exist because admins can’t do everything and the work needs to be spread out.
It’s your bot army. And you’re organic.
Waves arms around gesticulating wildly.
I was onboard with the idea as an experiment, until you mentioned admins. Mods are just unpaid admins. If you introduce a hierarchical class of users that can do more than others, it’s no longer the ‘organic’ internet interaction you’re selling it as.
I think that’s also an important distinction:
are not the same thing. The Internet includes a lot of non-individual, non-human, and non-social actors, in a way that real life doesn’t: companies don’t send people to insert themselves into your meetups at the library, but they do send ‘representatives’ into Internet spaces. If you try to replicate the social anarchism of small group meetups on the internet, you will not get an authentic experience.
https://youtu.be/O_v43wbJWGQ