alt Hacker NewsIt's not that easy to block someone. It's easy to block a particular account, sure.
But there are now people who purposefully make a bunch of accounts to spread lies.
> that unless social media has a mechanism to promote civilised behaviour
We need more Dangs.
He is maybe the major reason this forum is still decent. Tasteful moderation is really hard, I'd say the vast majority of Reddit subs don't have good moderation.
Anonymity leads to the multiple accounts issue. Pseudonymity addresses that. Eg: "We don't know the name of the person behind this identifier in real life, but we see we blocked them last year, so we will deny their request to open a new account with us"
You and I agree the moderation here on HN is fantastic. There is a minority of people who would prefer HN allow spam, bigotry, calls to violence, revenge porn, snuff content, etc. A large community - a nation, for example - should have the ability to 'tyrannize' an antisocial minority into enforcing some base level of standards. For example, at a minimum, to prevent a site operator from showing those types of content to users who do not specifically request them.