I was reading an article the other day about a couple who bought an ocean view home to retire.

It was perfect, but the neighbours driveway ran along the beach between their home and the beach - and they thought it would be nice to have a garden there instead... so they spoke to their new neighbour about maybe buying the land for the driveway, and selling him an equal sized strip of land on the other side of their property. Basically, no change to their neighbour's home at all - but the neighbour's driveway would go between two houses instead of along the beach.

All perfectly reasonable, but somehow it fell to shit when the neighbour... turned out to be a nutcase and bought two huge rusty shipping containers, an old bulldozer, cars that had been crashed, etc and dumped all of them along his driveway right next to their house. And when they complained, he added huge a canvas tarp sections between all that mess and the ocean. So now they can't even see the ocean at all from their home - all they can see is a huge white wall and a bunch of rusty old crap along their fence line.

If they were in a HOA... they would be able to force him to remove all of that junk. But they're not, so there's nothing they can do. They tried taking it to court, but the judge said "yeah, he's obviously an asshole... but it's his land. He is allowed to have shipping containers and ruined cars on his land".

If you're in a HOA, you might occasionally be forced to do something you'd rather not do. But you will never have to deal with totally unreasonable neighbours like that example. Living in a HOA definitely isn't something I'd want - but I can see why some people like them.

But anyway... I fail to see how that is any way like X. If anything X is exactly the opposite of a HOA... it's like buying a house in a suburb that's full of trolls and assholes. A "HOA" social network is a place where everyone is boring and if you're not boring, you get kicked out.