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Notes -
Lack of external pressure + Evaporative cooling + community sentiment
On Reddit, there was some degree of pressure on both the mods and the users to avoid the attention of the admins. Leaving Reddit meant that they were no longer bound by those restraints and the least motivated posters were left behind. That in turn drives more people away who don't want to spend all their time debating HBD, etc...
Community sentiment has an effect of its own. To quote someone from the post-mortem on the SSC sub:
Of course, it goes beyond the general sense of hostility that drives people off and into the problem of moderation. Even if they're not biased by nature, internet moderators are unpaid humans and they're going to tend to look at users generating a lot of reports and angry responses as troublemakers, even if the quality of their posting is well within acceptable parameters.
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