> Growth-focused social media platforms don't want to remove anything but the noisiest noise, because there's still a pair of monetizable eyeballs behind most sources of noise. In fact, if you can be particularly noisy, you generate drama, which makes the platform emotionally salient and thus stickier.

This depends if a platform is building for quality or quantity.

There are a number of things HN could do tomorrow that would substatially drive engagement, but lower quality.

Granted, VC funding requires growth-at-all-costs, which tends to remove quality as a long term option.

> Digg collapsed because they replaced the entire website with something completely different. They didn't fail to moderate the community, they just shut it down.

Eh, as someone on it at the time, Digg's userbase collapsed before the redesign.

This roughly tracks with my memory: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bzibi/c...

I remember the HD-DVD/Blu-ray encryption key episode especially being an 'Oh, you're a square, not one of the cool kids' community moment.