This said on a site that basically only exists because the moderation is extremely well done, and is definitely not just "approve everything".

While I appreciate the work that dang does, it might be a bit much to insinuate that the site only exists because of it.

If there's any other special sauce, I haven't noticed it.

The secret sauce is that there isn't such a torrent of awful content in need of moderation that we need more than a handful of moderators, despite a pretty big userbase.

Some stuff is illegal in some countries and will get your platform sued or taken down completely. Sometimes competitors and malicious users will spam undesirable content to smear your brand identity, get you blacklisted by search engines, or simply eat up your time and money. Sadly, not everything can be approved.