PMFJI, but on your point 6.
You talked about lawsuits in other cases.
But suppose there's a stock thread here and the moderator is one of a group of touts doing a p&d. He bans anybody who posts negatively, so everything on the thread is positive -- but of course he doesn't say he has banned negative thoughts. In fact, he may write to a newbie -- "check out the posting history, you'll see that there's nobody who has any concerns about this stock, everybody thinks it's got great potential." So the person buys, it dumps, and he sues IH because by allowing the tout to ban all negative posters IH has participated in the fraud. The protections accorded to boards that they are not responsible for content but are only carriers of information might be challengable if they set up rules that allow such manipulations.
And you know if it's possible, some aggressive attorney is going to try it some day.
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Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and
those who matter don't mind. -- Dr. Seuss