Comment by nl

I think it's worth noting that I've been using HN for quite a while (nearly 10 years! Wow. didn't realize...). I don't think my judgements are some kind of rapidly-adopted thing.

That last link seems like cherry-picking. Why a screenshot? Why not a link to the comment on HN? Likely it was flagged and/or downvoted, which is how the community signals that a post is unacceptable. In other words your example, correctly examined, probably indicates the opposite of your claim.

Actually at the time the push-back was downvoted. And yes, I agree that it was likely flagged, hidden and then deleted.

But that isn't the point.

The point is that people did think it was acceptable to write that here, and others agreed with it.

The traditional forum response has been to hide that type of behavior from the rest of the site population. But on HN, people turn on "show dead", and then respond to it just as though it was there. We've seen similar kinds of behavior on Reddit, where poisonous behavior was pushed into subreddits in the belief that would protect the rest of the site. I don't think there is any argument that theory failed.

This is a public, anonymous internet forum. Of course people are going to post such things, and of course it takes time for the community immune system, including downvotes and flags and moderation, to react. But it usually does. You can't judge HN fairly without taking that into account.

I no longer believe that to be true, and that Rwanda example shows what I'm talking about.

Yes, the top level comments are vaguely ok most of the time, a couple of days after they are off the front page. By that point no one is reading them and the damage is done. The slow process of downvoting, flagging and moderation just doesn't work anymore.

I don't know what the solution is, but I'm sure that right now HN is doing more harm than good.