> A social media site can ban an abusive user without them being able to simply register a new account.
This is an absolutely gargantuan-sized antifeature that would single-handedly drive me out of the parts of the internet that choose to embrace this hellish tech.
No, my position is not any of these things you just decided to attribute to me. Allowing people to make alternate accounts has been the status quo on the internet since time immemorial, if only because it's currently not preventable. False bans are not rare (I only got unbanned from LinkedIn after getting banned with no explanation and having my appeal initially denied, for instance). I've gotten banned on places, rightfully (in my view) or not, then come back on a new account and avoided stepping on anyone's toes and lived happily ever after, too.
Of course in the ideal world all bans would be handed out correctly, be of a justified duration, and offer due process to those banned. We don't live in that world, the incentive is emphatically NOT to handle appeals fairly and understandably. Getting truly permanently banned on a major platform can be a life changing experience.
In reality users can generally get away with signing up new accounts, but new users will be marked somehow and/or limited (e.g. green names on HN) and get extra scrutiny, and sign-ups will have friction and limits to let it not scale up to mass spammer scale. The rest is handled manually by moderation staff.
The limits to moderator power are a feature that compensates for the limits to moderator competence.
I think social media platforms should have the ability to effectively ban abusive users, and I’m pretty sure that’s a mainstream viewpoint shared by most people.
The alternative is that you think people should be able to use social media platforms in ways that violate their rules, and that the platforms should not be able to refuse service to these users. I don’t think that’s a justifiable position to take, but I’m open to hearing an argument for it. Simply calling it “hellish” isn’t an argument.
And can you clarify if your position accounts for spammers? Because as far as I can see, your position is very clearly “spammers should be allowed to spam”.