[yholio]

> They do not need to be done.

You have surely never operated a website that publishes user generated content. Every available textbox and file uploader will be filled with garbage so revolting that, without moderation, will quickly kill any chance of respectability for your site.

[brimble]

You're missing the point. Yes, if you let randos upload publicly-visible media to your site you'll need to check it for illegal material (or, if you're a bigco, pay hundreds or thousands of other people to do it, because god knows the CEO, president, board, et c., won't subject themselves to that).

If you have advertisers (or just standards) you'll also need to check it for horrible stuff that's not illegal. And by "you'll", in the case of a place like Facebook, I mean "some other people'll".

But you could... not do that.

[Edman274]

If you're arguing in good faith you should probably explicitly acknowledge that you recognize that you're using hacker news to argue that a website like hacker news shouldn't exist. Do you think that no one is paid to moderate this site? Do you think that no one has tried to spam illegal content here before?