Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?
There are two classes of users: normal people who want to use your service and people who actively weaponize it for their own ego. Those latter users have all the time in world and can defeat any attempt to stop them.  This is because, online, time is the only resource that matters.  You have a limited amount of this resource.  Your company has a limited amount of this resource.  Your normal users have a limited amount of this resource.There is a discussion below about Flat Earthers having every right to speak -- and I agree.  And in fact, I doubt anyone would truly care about Flat Earthers having their Flat Earth forum or even adding an occasional Flat Earth comment whenever NASA posts a round Earth photo.  That's never been the problem.  The problem is that some users don't stop there -- they're on a mission to change the world.  They going to abuse your platform to the extreme to promote their views.  Most big platforms right now have a huge mess of people tossing free bytes at each other.If a small group of dedicated people wanted to ruin Hacker News for the rest of us, I have no doubt in my mind that they could.  No amount of moderation could stop them.  I've seen it first hand a few times with other services.