Comment by dang

> You must have done something extremely bad in your previous life for having this job.

Well that made me lol thanks!

> I understand you did the flagging in this case?

Oh no - users do the flagging, in this case and nearly every case. What we do, when we see a story like this, is take a look and see if it would make sense to turn the flags off according to the criteria I described above. I did that 3 or 4 times yesterday, for example, including once or twice in response to emails that people sent, advocating for a particular story.

> and it would spare others submitting relevant pieces about the subject

I don't think that would work. Users are going to submit what they want no matter what we say or do.

> the MOT topic that is allowed to be discussed (afaik) is the purging of information by the Trump decrees. The topics we posted here are about something else

I would call that the same MOT. One could name it "the aggressive and perhaps unprecedented transition of federal power going on in the US government right now" -something like that.

> namely the fact that Musk's servants are taking highly sensitive, personal data from government systems (even from air gapped ones)

The only submission about that which I've seen to date is the OP, and here (as some users pointed out) the reliability of the source is a little unclear. If there's a solid, relatively neutral third party report about this, it might be a better fit for HN. I googled and didn't find one (I mean on this point specifically) but I didn't search deeply.

> Also, I am sure to have seen high quality submissions taken down months before these things became actuality.

I'm always happy to explain what happened in any particular case, but I can only do that if I have specific links to look at.

> You can guess that if you see these kinds of topics over a longer period of time taken down, you start to form hypotheses.

Alas, there is no upper bound on the hypotheses that users will form, and no lower bound on how much information they require before doing so. This is something we just have to live with and address as best we can. My strategy is to answer as many comments as I can [1], and to accept that no matter what I do, its effect on this problem will have measure zero.

> My personal view though is that at the time the house of Weimar is burning down, we should be able to process more than 1/2 "actuality" topics

I hear you! and I don't mean to be dismissive—I know a lot people share your view right now—but I have to point out that to invoke the analogy of Weimar is already to assume your conclusion.

This is by far the most common historical analogy that people reach for, and it also happens to be by far the most activating to (let's call it) the social nervous system. I think our job is to down-regulate that as much as possible for as long as possible, even though it means I'll be called (a) an enabler of Nazis, (b) a Nazi sympathizer, and (c) probably a Nazi myself, because that is how the internet game is played.

If I understand internet dynamics, then it's not true that this-time-is-different [2]; it's just how it feels. But I could be wrong. If what-happens-after-Weimar happens, I'll be happy (well, not happy, but willing) to admit having made the wrong bet, if there's still time to do so.

[1] (and emails—but it's better to do it in the comments because then there's a chance that more people will see it)

[2] I mean for HN. Obviously the events going on right now are different from what happened before; but the only aspect that it's my job to comment on here is the HN moderation aspect.