Like, I keep seeing reddit moderators abusing their powers but rarely they suffer consequences. So I'm wondering if there's a way to have a public forum without moderators.

You mean, is it legally possible? Technically possible? Or are you imagining what would happen if there were no moderators?

There are many public forums that are not actively moderated, in that the administrator responsible for moderating can't be bothered.

Given the nature of internet commentators: yes it is possible but it won't be topic related for long and will devolve into pure anarchy and Godwin's law will be invokable in less than a day.

If you like nazi bars with constant arguments and nastiness, sure.

That's called 4chan. You can make a version of 4chan on the fediverse but good luck keeping your hosting providers happy when the content stored becomes more and more vile (just read their wikipedia page to find out their troubles with that)

Sure. Briefly.

never really seen anything like this happen in IRC tbh... majority of people there are there because the majority of people aren't there.

once the masses come in, things turn to instant shit. then corporations come in and rape the masses and break everything.

majority of people there are there because the majority of people aren't there

I really like that quote. It's spot on.

If you're cool with Nazis and CSAM, sure.

Eternal September

The more people in a space, whether that's online or IRL, the more important moderation/regulation becomes

It's one of the big reasons why urban city-dwellers and rural people often have very different politics

Spam is as old as the internet. I think a public service with zero moderation is going to have spam without moderation.

Yes everyone just abuses the people who are acting up until they stop posting. It works great.

Or, more often, the ones acting up abuse everyone else until they leave. Spam. Porn. Spam. CSAM. Spam.

Person who leaves located

Craigslist?

Put it on i2p. It’s fucking feral there.

Anonymous forum?
Or only selected membership?

You can always tell when someone doesn't understand what Anarchism is when they conflate it with chaos.

That sunny episode is a good example of how it’ll just get exploited

nah, even 4chan is actually heavily moderated

Only with some heavy restrictions.

Imagine a forum where you can, by default, only see the messages of people in your allow list.

That way spammers and people with bad intentions will just scream into the void.

Technically, yes, at least insofar as the elimination of a specific 'moderator' position. You could find ways to distribute the duty to users or something, but you still need something to control content or you will end up with something posted which brings government level antagonism.

I'd be more impressed if you could find someone willing to wade through all that crap.

Yeah, it’s hard work protecting your own space.