Comment by dkjaudyeqooe
5 months ago
> All: please don't post the sort of low-information / high-indignation comment that could just as easily appear in any semi-related thread. Such generic comments make the discussion less interesting and more activating. That's not what we're trying for here.
We'd love to have the sort of useful discussion you're aiming for, but all new discussions that reference Musk are being systematically flagged by apparent supporters of Musk.
We're being censored.
> We'd love to have the sort of useful discussion you're aiming for,
Alas, that is not true for all values of "we". Let's see how we do in the current thread. (Edit: so far it does seem to be a little better.)
> but all new discussions that reference Musk are being systematically flagged
Yes, and at the same time we've turned off the flags on quite a few of them—enough that this continues to be by far the most-discussed topic on HN right now. I realize that's not enough for those who want more, but this is always the case whenever there is a MOT (Major Ongoing Topic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011
* (because as far as I know, all the important questions have already been answered, which is not to say everyone is happy!)
It's thanks to this kind of guidance that HN survives as a focused technical hivemind.
At the same time, issues of this kind of revolutionary scope are important for users to process. We can learn a lot from each other.
Irrespective of politics, it's necessary to hedge systemic risk that's appearing due to destabilization of the US. That affects so many of us that it's hard to ignore.
Keeping some persistent outlet (front page post) for discussion of this major topic is important to give people a politically agnostic and technically proficient space to integrate what's happening.
Thank you for filtering the noise and fear with the posts.
> Keeping some persistent outlet (front page post) for discussion of this major topic is important to give people a politically agnostic and technically proficient space to integrate what's happening.
It doesn't really feel like a politically agnostic space. A large number of users (though probably a small proportion of total HN users) seem to care a lot and of those who care a lot it looks like at least 3/4rs have a "leftist" persuasion.
(Sadly, I'm not longer aware of any intelligent and politically agnostic space where politics can be discussed. All those I knew have gradually become dominated by one political direction or another)
I would also say, that to me dang and team is doing a good job in general. I disagree with any sentiment that this is being censored, and I applaud the openness for discussing this.
> But also by users who just care about protecting HN for its intended purpose, which is vulnerable to getting consumed by political flames.
I think there has been an element of backlash here. I believe there are people posting Musk articles repeatedly in response to the flagging, feeding the cycle.
Yes, that happens sometimes.
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>this continues to be by far the most-discussed topic on HN right now
I wonder if you are maybe too close to the problem to see it from a normal HN user's perspective. From my perspective, I don't get this impression because I don't see the full breath of conversations that happen on HN like you do. People clearly want to talk about this here and I have rarely seen these stories actually on the front page of HN because they are so quick to drop off the front page due to flagging, downvoting, the flame war detector, or whatever other behind the scenes mechanics exist that you are obviously more knowledgeable about than me. People continuing to have conversations on posts that no one sees unless they specifically search them out is the equivalent of shadowbanning those conversations. Yes, they are still happening, but the normal HN user isn't actually seeing them and that is why you are fielding so many complaints from normal users who want to see these posts.
I think you're right, but it's not clear to me what we could do differently about that. Ultimately it derives from the fundamentals of the site. Most people don't see most of what gets posted here. I don't either.
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On the whole, I appreciate and respect your approach to moderation. However, it’s hard to ignore the fact that many leaders in the YC sphere — possibly including Garry Tan — seem to be aligned with Thiel and Yarvin on the topic of government and democracy. (The “smart ones” should aggressively take over and restructure our republic in the image of a corporation.) If there is, in fact, an active and ongoing conspiracy against the government headed by SV technocrats, how can we trust moderation on this site to be unbiased? (This is my fear, not an accusation.)
I don't know that you can. Trust is a strong word, and I can't claim to be unbiased. What I can claim is that we (HN mods) work hard to be conscious of our biases and not be swayed by them when making moderation calls. Can that be done perfectly? No. One is still influenced, even if not swayed, and anyway unconscious bias is a thing. But can it be done better with practice? I'm sure it can, at least to a point, and we do at least have years of practice.
Let me see what else I can come up with for you...
Well, here are some things: (1) HN's moderation approach to this kind of stuff hasn't changed in years; (2) the principles of what we do are pretty clearly articulated (though we don't always apply those principles optimally); (3) we try to always answer the questions people have; (4) we're open to admitting and correcting mistakes when we find out about them; and (5) FWIW, I don't know of anyone working on HN (or at YC for that matter) who supports the immoderate agenda you're describing, though I also don't have (or want, or need) core dumps of anyone's politics.
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[dupe]
Why did you let the article that was posted about a16z and Daniel Penny get flag killed so many times?
It’s so lame and tiresome —- powerful tech people look like idiots, it gets killed on here.
I haven't seen that one yet; I was mostly offline yesterday. This happens sometimes.
Btw, stories about "powerful tech people look like idiots" get discussed on HN all the time. The tenor of HN comments about that kind of thing leans strongly towards the cynical, enough that it's actually a problem for the long-term quality of the site. I may be misinterpreting you, but if you feel like HN needs more of that, I have to disagree.
Edit: $Firm hires $PolarizingPerson is probably not a good topic for HN but I'm happy to take a look at specific articles.
> Using the word 'censored' ultimately just means you'd like to see more of this topic on HN. I certainly respect that, but there are also a lot of other users who would like to see less of it.
Woo love changing the meaning of words to fit what I imagine other people are using it for!!
Sorry, I'm not getting you here—perhaps if you made your point without snark, it would be easier to understand and respond to.
At what point does a story become big enough to disable the flagging mechanic? Maybe this post isn't the one to do it, but there has been an onslaught of stories about the damage Musk and DOGE is doing to the US government including lots of tech specific stories. This is an important ongoing story that is relevant to the community here and every post about it shoots up the front page of HN only to disappear minutes later because of mass flagging.
> At what point does a story become big enough to disable the flagging mechanic?
I'm not sure "big" is the right word because we're not optimizing HN for topic importance - that would make for a current affairs site, which HN is not [1, 2]. But maybe that's hair-splitting in this case.
The short answer to your question is that when there's a Major Ongoing Topic (MOT), moderators turn off flags on stories that contain Significant New Information (SNI) that is interesting in HN's sense of the word (i.e. gratifying intellectual curiosity) and there is a fair chance of the article supporting a substantively different discussion than the ones which have already recently appeared on the same topic.
If you want more information, I'd start with my other post in this subthread (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
>moderators turn off flags on stories
I replied to your comment in that other chain, but just want to point something else out here specifically. There seems to be more than just flags that are dragging down this story. The top post on HN at the moment has 117 points and is 3 hours old. This post has 238 points and is 1 hour old and is currently number 8 on the front page. Number 7 is currently a post with 28 points posted 2 hours ago. There is clearly something else at work here besides flags and maybe disabling flags isn't enough to give these type of posts staying power on the front page of HN.
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I don't need a response to these questions, as they are HN internal/sensitive, but I wanted them to be at least thought about:
Do you track people who frequently flag stories and/or comments?
Do you collate those results against particular subjects? i.e. Any musk related story always gets flagged by $group
Do those groups/people always flag within X minutes of each other?
Do those groups/people match the general location of a random sampling of HN users, or do they differ in a statistically significant way?
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One solution might be to limit how many new discussions a user can flag within a certain period.
I suspect the curation mentioned above[0] is crowd-sourced to a relatively small handful of “power” users with an outsized amount of flags in general. Probably not much of a solution to limit that.
0: Slightly confused; I’m referring to dang’s comment, which I thought was the GP comment.
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Not everyone is censoring you. Some of us want to learn about cool technology, not read politics irrelevant to daily life.
Fine, you're welcome to skip the political posts. I've felt the same frustration.
But when any new post that has Musk in the title is flagged within a minute or two entering the 'new' queue, then we have a problem.
We are indeed being censored by any meaningful definition of the term.
One one hand, I'm not flagging anything because I'm happy to let these discussions take place. If nothing else they are entertaining.
On the other hand, I see where the flaggers are coming from. If there isn't any gate keeping, other topics can be drowned out by a single highly contentious topic if enough people believe it is their civil duty to bring up that topic at every conceivable opportunity. This has happened on much of reddit, and on smaller scales in many social spheres across the country. Reddit demonstrates that almost any conversation could be steered into the direction of partisan politics if there are enough participants who think it's important to do that.
[flagged]
No I live in Europe. And if I didn’t I wouldn’t worry about it until there’s armed men in uniforms and red armbands walking the streets. I’ve found the best coping mechanism to the overabundance and inflation of information due to the internet, is to simply live within your horizon. I see no musk/trump, I fear no musk/trump. Have a great day, hope your cortisol levels are good.
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[flagged]
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[flagged]
its not censorship. There's several comments on here that have no relevance to the source article and are hand wringing which is unproductive and often is eager to descend into flaming. Lets talk about the article and its content and the potential cybersecurity risks to government data please.
> all new discussions that reference Musk are being systematically flagged by apparent supporters of Musk.
I'm not a Musk supporter at all, but I flag these discussions for several reasons.
1. To keep my sanity. These stories are pretty much everywhere and will be all over for the next 4 years at least. I don't want to engage in them and lose even more time and get even more anxious.
2. The comments aren't useful and don't bring new information. It's pretty clear what Elon and the oligarchs are trying to do. Those who don't see it won't change their mind at that point.
HN is one of the rare forum to avoid flame war, let's keep it that way.
If your objection is that "I don't want to engage with it" and "I don't find them useful", it seems obvious to me that the solution is to simply not click on the thread and move on, rather than to attempt to stifle everyone else from engaging with it.
Well, as a member of this community, it's my right and duty to cast a vote for flagging. If I'm an outlier, it won't have any effect.
I believe this post is off-topic as it's political and doesn't satisfy my "hacker curiosity". There are other venues to discuss these topics.
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But where this particular article is from Brian Krebs, a niche reporter on hacker news, and bringing SNI, significant new information to the table, why flag this one? The broader strokes of what's going on is obvious, but this particular article is a specific detail of a detail, from a source that is relevant to tits community, and not a generic breathless CNN or Fox News "something happened today"
I wouldn't exactly call Krebs "niche", he's quite well known on his own.
It's only censorship when the government does it, or so I've been told.