1) Running HN stressed out PG
2) Discouraging forum competitors significantly helps YC.
Per YC etiquette, please explain your downvotes.
But it could be that dang enjoys what pg found stressful.
I was part of running a community website but I absolutely hated running the admin side of it. I just wanted to build pretty UI and make things work. I absolutely loathed responding to support emails. It drained me out. A non technical friend of ours loved the admin and people side. He would onboard users, write nice how to articles for others, resolve conflicts, respond to suooort emails. He did not care one bit about how it all worked, just that it worked and he could help others get value out of the site.
Some people are good at building things, Some people are great at fostering built things.
He literally wrote "Don't start a forum". Yet, solutions to current problems with social media may be limited by the fact that only a few companies manage the content. PG is not motivated to innovate on social media tools as a builder or an investor.
We need better forums with better moderation tools that enable more users to participate in moderation. It is possible to do within existing forums or a new one, so I would encourage innovation on this rather than discourage it. There are a hundred ways you could empower better communities using things like annotator agreement or automated appeals.