And how do you think any other website decides what to recommend you, if not other users' actions? Remember the Netflix prize? The data set they gave you is how other people rated movies. You can absolutely build a recommendation system without manual input from the operator.

And HN absolutely does promote submissions at the moderators' discretion. The moderators sometimes give old but overlooked submissions a second chance, they also turn the flamewar detector on some stories that they think deserve more attention which effectively promotes them against users's will.

> users also determine (by voting) what is popular

The algorithm considers various other things such the ratio of votes to comments, age of the post etc.

Just compare how different the front page is to /active

> Ycombinator doesn't promote or bury any particular post with their own algorithms

Certain things do get put above the popular stuff if they're fresh enough and your account is deemed to be a taste setter.

> they don't exercise any editorial review or control.

They can decide things like overturning the flagging of a post or burying something even without the flag etc.

So do you think the same logic applies to ISPs? Should they be reviewing all the content that they allow to transit their network and ban you if you try to evade their controls by using uncrackable encryption because if they mess up and allow you to distribute copyrighted or defamatory material they will be held liable? Remember that section 230 was originally enacted to protect them from liability.

> They are the ones amplifying and distributing this content, why should they have zero responsibility for it?

If LinkedIn started allowing hardcore pornography, many of their advertisers would leave.

With that in mind, are you certain LinkedIn takes “no responsibility” for the content they distribute? It would seem they have a multimillion-dollar stake in the outcome of their efforts to shape their commercial product.

And on TikTok users vote what is popular by giving videos watch time. It is no different.

> I have this view to try to increase diversity of media consumption and break people out of echo chambers.

Making sites liable for all user-posted content would do the reverse of this. Every platform that lets people submit content would have to stop doing that, because it’s an impossible liability to manage.

You’d have to host your own site. You wouldn’t be able to share anything about it on a social media site because its user-generated content. No visitors unless you advertise it through paid contracts with companies that can review it and decide to accept the liability.

Ban third-party advertising.

If YCombinator has to officially approve every article submitted, then it will become a publisher of a news site, not a social media site. Essentially, it would be a New York Times site with unpaid writers.

It's a matter of resources, not corporate status per se. For better or for worse, the current status quo largely democratizes content promotion. You and I can post these two comments here and put our ideas and names in front of a bunch of strangers for $0.

In a world where the risk-adjusted cost of allowing third-party comments on your platform shoots up, someone has to pay that cost. A personal blog hosted on your server might struggle to find any significant reach without a real advertising budget, because distributing speech/content that promotes your platform would no longer be ~free.

I don't necessarily believe that the major social media platforms would fully evaporate, but I'd expect some or all of these changes across the ecosystem:

* Massively scaled up LLM-based moderation/censorship.

* Replacement of direct user content posting with an LLM-based interface (to chat with an LLM about what you want it to write on your behalf).

* Payment-gated public posting, e.g. monthly or per-post fees to cover liability/insurance and/or LLM inference costs. Possibly higher fees for direct authorship vs LLM pair posting.

* Massive rise in adoption of decentralized architectures, either via current mainstream platforms if legally tolerated or via anonymous dark web platforms otherwise. Maybe Tor becomes as normalized as VPNs, or maybe the Western legal environment shifts hard against general-purpose computing.

I understand where this sentiment is coming from, but I think it's taking a lot of the current status quo for granted. What you guys are proposing isn't necessarily a targeted change that would simply make bad guys stop doing bad things. It's more likely a massive structural change that would dramatically alter the social and economic fabric of the internet as we know it, and not in a way that most of us would like.