That's too simplistic of a statement. Sometimes you have to drive some segments out to keep others or to keep advertisers happy. If HN didn't put effort in curating the community would a lot of us still be here?
The limited, mostly consistent curating done by Dang and the staff from HN bears absolutely no resemblance to the widespread censorship on Youtube. For example, many interesting and substantive discussions about various Covid issues happened in HN comments that were completely banned on Youtube, Twitter and other government-compliant platforms in recent years. Certainly it is beneficial for a commercial platform to drive off those who are so offensive that they actively reduce demand from the network by driving away users, but it is absurd to think that has been the rational for Youtube's censorship policy. I would suggest that if HN implemented a Youtube-like censorship policy they would lose far more viewers than they would gain.
StanislavPetrov|3 years ago