Comment by theferalrobot
1 year ago
Why are many respectful yet pro-israel posts being flagged and removed, while there are vile pro-hamas posts being flagged and left here? Why was discussion not allowed on Oct 7 but is now?
I know you are trying but it does not seem even handed. I'm screenshotting a whole collection of them examples if seeing them together would be helpful.
(I've detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39146010.)
I'd need to see links to specific comments, but certainly the flags aren't working any differently than they usually do. The only difference between [flagged][dead] and just [flagged] is the number of flags relative to upvotes; in the former case it would be higher than in the latter case.
Your several comments in this thread seem to be coming from a place of battling for one side against the other. I'm sure you have very good reasons for it, but it's not the intended spirit of discussion here, as I tried to explain at the top of the thread. In such cases, where people have (legitimately) strong feelings on a topic, the temptation to see the mods as biased in favor of the opposite side is almost irresistible. It happens from every perspective on every divisive topic, and this topic is one of the most divisive we've ever seen.
Well for instance, why is the news about UNWRA being censored here? I can find links to posts via google but they've all been removed, for example:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39160571
Personally I'd rather non-tech world news stay off HN completely but I'm calling it out because as someone who is up on world news I see quite a double standard unraveling here and that seems unfortunate.
Users flagged that story. We didn't touch it or even see it. I've turned off the flags now.
I just wrote a long explanation of how we approach the question of flags on stories like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39160743 was flagged, and I answered the same way: that is, (1) I turned off the flags, but also (2) explained why HN can't have another frontpage thread about this two days after the last one.
I know a pair of cases is a small sample but I hope it can count as a sign of how we try to be even-handed. I've learned the hard way that it's simply impossible to avoid perceptions and accusations of bias on divisive topics; even the most neutral moderation is going to generate such perceptions (actually it's worse than that—it's going to generate more). I'm not claiming to be at that level but I can tell you for sure that we do work hard at being even-handed.