If I'm allowed to indiscriminately post content, I'm allowed to indiscriminately ban content. I owe you jack shit. I owe this website jack shit. I owe MK jack shit.

Fuckin' A. And the fact that everyone is there because they followed that user means it is that user's prerogative to scuttle that discussion.

Except in reality what you'd have is a trending news story showing from multiple submitters, but the conversations gravitate to the threads with the largest number of comments. It isn't so much the value of the submitter that determines the number of comments (especially in cases of really popular news stories) but rather factors like who posted first, number of followers they had based on other unrelated posts, which thread happened to be the one where the most comments started out in or where a poster made a particularly salient point, etc.

In short, for major news events, it isn't the virtues of the submitter that give the thread value in each instance, though true maybe in the aggregate.

So while it's all fine and good to swear up a storm and claim Hubski users as your 'fuckin hostages', it lets submitters lock other users out of discussions that are happening not by virtue of the submitter alone in many cases. I get that you don't care about that, but I'm guessing you're in the extreme minority.

Do I want to hear every cockamamie thing you say? Abso-fucking-lutely not. But now everything you say is sitting here so I can either let you spout off at the mouth or engage you. Or, I can turn off notifications from everybody.

Well as outlined, I think we both agree that you should be able to universally block comments from users, right? I don't think there's any controversy there, and I can't think of a really good argument against it. On a side note, I'm having a serious discussion about features, but I get the feeling that it's just upsetting you and you really don't want me to answer you. Kinda hard when you keep replying with passionate points!