Comment by ketzu
4 years ago
> ??? Is it common that people think he is Asian for some reason? What a strange paragraph to include...
Not just that, but for some time you could observe subthreads accusing him of being a chinese subversion of HN in china related discussions.
There's been a lot of misguided moderation that happens to be in favor of China. Earlier in the pandemic, the left bought into the propaganda that the lab leak theory etc were racist. I attribute the pro-China moderation to good intentions and ignorance.
I don't know if you're talking about HN, but what you're describing there is not the dynamic here.
That is true; I remember, early on, the lab leak theory (of which I am a proponent) received substantial and fair discussion with significant technical detail, long before it became a partisan thing.
I just assumed he had some intense business interests involving trade with China. He has had a heavy moderation hand when people are critical of the CCP or for example what was formerly thought of as the conspiracy theory about COVIDs likely lab leak origin. He seems to have come around a little bit on this maybe he read about the Uighurs or who knows.
It's true that I/we come down heavily on nationalistic flamewar, slurs, and groundless insinuations about spies and shills and bots and manipulators and all that kind of thing. But this isn't related to China—it follows clearly from the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and is the same whichever country or group is at issue.
Guidelines-breaking comments do frequently appear about China, but that is a function of geopolitical and media trends, not HN moderation. The way we moderate such comments has nothing to do with my/our personal views about China or any other country. If you stop and think about it and you know the HN guidelines well, this shouldn't be that hard to believe. The vast majority of these moderation calls are not borderline.
From a moderation perspective, everything in the above paragraph is obvious. From a user perspective, it's often impossible to communicate, because whenever someone has a strong feeling about $topic, their view about moderation is determined by their feeling about $topic. If they see us moderating something they agree with, they jump to the conclusion that we're secretly in cahoots with the opposing side. Of course the opposing side does the same thing.
I’m hesitant to respond because I don’t know that I can really add anything meaningful other to say that I think one day history will change the way you and others view some of those comments you’ve considered flamebait. Lab leak is one example. I think that’s now acceptable as a topic of discussion amongst educated adults, but it was deemed a “groundless insinuation” at one point and I believe something that would get moderated here, maybe I’m wrong about that. Meanwhile many comments get posted that make fair and strong criticisms of Facebook, or apple or the surveillance state in the USA, five eyes and so forth. I think you and others do a great job of moderating and I’m not trying to argue otherwise, just that I think flamebait is subjective and it’s possible to be overzealous and that criticism of the CCP is no less legitimate than criticism of the NSA, FBI, the prosecution of Julian Assange, etc… I say that with great respect and gratitude for the generally excellent work that you do.
And I agree with you enforcing the flameware rule because if that's not done HN won't be a discussion forum it'll be a cesspool of hate like Twitter or Facebook