Brimble said "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."
Hacker news and Facebook:
1. Have advertisers (and just standards)
2. Check it for horrible stuff that's "not illegal"
3. Using "some other people'll" that are paid with money.
Now, here's the thing. Facebook and Hacker news are not equivalent in quality or quantity when it comes to how much illegal or horrible content is uploaded to them. But they both have advertisers, a risk of bad content, and use at least one paid moderator to prevent bad content from existing. Brimble is saying that Facebook and other hypothetical services could "not do that", which either means that:
1. The website / service will not exist or
2. Paid moderation on that service will not exist or
3. Moderation on that service will not exist or
4. User created content on that service will not exist.
That would affect Facebook and hacker news. No, I do not believe that hacker news is exposed to as much illegal and horrible content as Facebook. However, it is exposed to some, and it seems like the remedy in both cases is for the website to not exist. I'm pretty sure that if someone asked dang whether they had ever, in their years of moderating this site, seen something that disturbed them, he'd answer yes. I'm certain of it.
When did I ever argue that something shouldn't exist? I only pointed out a false equivalence in the parent comment.
If you want to know my opinion though, I don't personally get enough value out of facebook, instagram, etc to use them at all. So if you were to ask me if the price of psychological damage to content moderation/review workers is worth it, I'd say no.
