I like to think of the question of moderation as the same question people have been asking themselves for ages:

How do we organize ourselves.

In this situation, the moderators have power, and the system people interact within does as well. A place like reddit is a world where infinite nations may exist, but all nations are ruled by dictators who, in theory, have absolute power. Don't like your nation, or think reddit deserves to be a place for free speech, make a new sub and don't moderate it. 4Chan is organized around an idea similar to reddit but with no ability to spawn infinite boards, and with selected moderators.

Hubski/twitter/facebook/pintrest is a world where things work similarly to how they work in real life. People connect to one another or isolate themselves from one another by voluntering to see the things another says. Hubski is a bit of an oddball here thanks to a lot of it's reddit like elements, but I think it belongs in this category more than anything else. Perhaps you could say it is facebook, but if facebook wanted to encourage people to form a hivemind.

It's capitalism vs socialsm. The free market vs the shared-responsibility. Companies vs Unions. The dictators with power over others vs the mob rule where those who aren't agreed with get shunned.

Really, to me it seems like reddit-like places are far better at generating ideas, for having discussion, and so on. Facebook-like, meanwhile is good for those who just want to see new content without dealing with stress or the ability for people to publicly disagree with them if the user doesn't want them to.