> Hi! It looks like you might have come from Hacker News.
> Asahi Linux developers are frequent targets of abuse on Hacker News. Despite our pleas, the moderators have not taken effective action to improve the situation.
> Overtly hateful content is often flagged on HN and not immediately visible. Unfortunately, when a comment is flagged and killed, its child subthread is not. That preserves the 'clean' image of the website, but the reduced moderation activity enables abuse to continue. Although you don't see those threads, search engines do. HN uniquely has a high page rank and low moderation, making it a prime target for bad actors to poison search results with abuse, bigotry, and nastiness. This isn't low-level trolling, but an organized attempt to destroy lives, including of developers in our communities.
> Please demand change within your community.
This is an unfair and gross assessment. I've lost some respect from Asahi for this.
They're calling for extreme moderation of opinions they don't agree with, which is the opposite of open discourse.
Asahi: deal with it. You're Streisand Effecting this. Your inability to handle drama is actually causing more drama. Just turn the other cheek and ignore it.
seconded. even if it was completely true criticism, which it categorically is not, putting up a half-page banner is extremely gauche and immature.
saying things like "an organized attempt to destroy lives, including of developers in our communities" is patently not true. trolls get flagged. honest nice people who don't agree with you aren't trying to destroy anything and nor do they hate you.
I'm unsure whether the most charitable reading of your comment is to assume you missed that these linked phrases exist on the original site but were not included in the text copied into the comment above, or something else:
While you may be correct that initial "trolls get flagged", the statement on the Asahi site agrees that while the initial comment may be flagged & killed, the other comments in the subthread are still indexed, visible & tend not to get moderated/flag:
"Unfortunately, when a comment is flagged and killed, its child subthread is not. [...] but the reduced moderation activity enables abuse to continue. Although you don't see those threads, search engines do."
Based on other remarks about the content of such subthreads it seems surprising to claim that follow-on comments are made by "honest nice people".
I'm as much of a fan of adverbs as the next person but using words like "categorically", "extremely" & "patently" doesn't seem to leave much room for nuance of interpretation when written by someone who I'd have assumed was a third party observer?
While I could understand someone describing JWZ's HN-tailored "banner" (I wouldn't suggest researching this if anyone is not already familiar) gauche and immature, it feels like somewhat of a stretch in relation to a plain text message who last sentence starts with "Please".
If the opinions they don't agree with exist on Hacker News, and they do (check the dead comments in just about any thread where Asahi Linux comes up) then it isn't an unfair assessment at all.
What is the "it" that you're insisting they "deal with," here? What is the "drama?"
Also what value does bigotry, homophobia and transphobia have in open discourse that it must be preserved? None of that is on topic for Hacker News, why must it be on topic for the Asahi Linux community?
Turn the other cheek. Ignore it. It's 2025 we're learning lessons from USENET all over again and having to reign in the over-sensitive, disregulated behavior of some people.
I'm gay, on the spectrum, and my wife is trans. What certain people in "my" community do from places of relative comfort makes life for those of us in more moderate / conservative-leaning places worse. The screeching from our community [2] has turned our little demographic into a major culture war topic, and it's all because of the bad attention and friction you manufacture.
Conservatives let LGBT and trans issues slide for over two decades of my adult life. But by being loud and attempting to silence them -- by harassing them -- you've become the nail that sticks out and have now created a tidal wave of opinion against us.
It's easy for some European or SF trans person to call for universal outlawing and censoring of speech, but you have to realize your message is being read all over the world. It's interpreted by an overwhelming number of people as attempting to memory hole conservatives and flush away their culture.
Simultaneous to your harmful messages, folks are also being inundated with social media rage/engagement bait to make them think liberals are literally attempting to destroy and annihilate conservatives [3].
Your message adds weight to this perception, and all you accomplish here is making the majority of voters angry at us. It even turns moderates and would-be supporters sour.
I hate that you represent me by association and think that this is acceptable behavior.
As another anecdote, when I talk to my friends about Rust, the subject of "drama" frequently comes up. Why is that? Suddenly my work becomes harder for an entirely unrelated and unmerited reason. That's just me as an LGBT person - imagine how straight people feel.
We shouldn't have to keep reading about this over and over. It's orthogonal, childish, dysfunctional behavior.
Take one more look at that loud disgusting banner on the top of the Asahi page. That's neener-neenering in front of everyone. Even the moderates you hope to be your allies. Please, for god's sake, put yourself into different shoes. You're asking them to do it for you, but it's your turn.
I think you'll see that your behavior is also harassment.
Please calm down, slow down, and behave like adults. Not everything warrants a response or attention. Chances are, it'll just go away and get totally ignored. When you engage, you shift the conversation and bring yourselves down to their level. You create a firestorm of drama that everyone watches like a burning wreck.
Stand above that.
[1] I only wanted to talk about the very public, inflammatory resignation and the immature handling of this by certain parties.
"Although you don't see those threads, search engines do. HN uniquely has a high page rank and low moderation, making it a prime target for bad actors to poison search results with abuse, bigotry, and nastiness. This isn't low-level trolling, but an organized attempt to destroy lives, including of developers in our communities."
Funny how this aged, now. Trying to shame people on Mastodon? Totally valid. Trying to chew someone out on a private forum? Now it's an organized attempt to destroy lives.
Always funny to me to read something like that. HN has high moderation, one of the highest I've seen on modern fora, only a few steps below r/AskHistorians for example. I don't see this "abuse, bigotry, and nastiness" here and even if there are comments like that, they are quickly downvoted and dead.
HN is pretty low moderation across the axis of personal attacks. If you politely say a ad hominem or racist or *-phobic thing here, it's unlikely you'll be moderated for it, for instance.
I can dig up many such examples, but I suspect the response would be, "of course that's not moderated" because this community has a different set of values than some others.
Moderation is always an editorial action, and as such we tend to view it as strong when it aligns with our own values and weak when it doesn't.
I don't think HN has high moderation at all. High moderation would imply stricter and quicker punishment for making rancid remarks.
There were a number of remarks on the prior thread by people making conspiracy claims, harassment, insults etc. Some of them get flag-killed, some just down voted but ultimately the users on the site still remain.
Of course I'm not one to be above such a thing in terms of insulting people occasionally but HN is really quite permissive in terms of what you can post and get away with. It takes consistent and repeated bad behavior to get a warning, and even more to get banned. And if you're an expert in being politely venomous you can get away with even more. That's why the outside perception of HN tends to be a lot worse than the inward one.
At the top of the page:
> Hi! It looks like you might have come from Hacker News.
> Asahi Linux developers are frequent targets of abuse on Hacker News. Despite our pleas, the moderators have not taken effective action to improve the situation.
> Overtly hateful content is often flagged on HN and not immediately visible. Unfortunately, when a comment is flagged and killed, its child subthread is not. That preserves the 'clean' image of the website, but the reduced moderation activity enables abuse to continue. Although you don't see those threads, search engines do. HN uniquely has a high page rank and low moderation, making it a prime target for bad actors to poison search results with abuse, bigotry, and nastiness. This isn't low-level trolling, but an organized attempt to destroy lives, including of developers in our communities.
> Please demand change within your community.
This is an unfair and gross assessment. I've lost some respect from Asahi for this.
They're calling for extreme moderation of opinions they don't agree with, which is the opposite of open discourse.
Asahi: deal with it. You're Streisand Effecting this. Your inability to handle drama is actually causing more drama. Just turn the other cheek and ignore it.
seconded. even if it was completely true criticism, which it categorically is not, putting up a half-page banner is extremely gauche and immature.
saying things like "an organized attempt to destroy lives, including of developers in our communities" is patently not true. trolls get flagged. honest nice people who don't agree with you aren't trying to destroy anything and nor do they hate you.
I'm unsure whether the most charitable reading of your comment is to assume you missed that these linked phrases exist on the original site but were not included in the text copied into the comment above, or something else:
* "bad actors" links to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms
* "destroy lives" links to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms#Suicides_of_harassm...
While you may be correct that initial "trolls get flagged", the statement on the Asahi site agrees that while the initial comment may be flagged & killed, the other comments in the subthread are still indexed, visible & tend not to get moderated/flag:
"Unfortunately, when a comment is flagged and killed, its child subthread is not. [...] but the reduced moderation activity enables abuse to continue. Although you don't see those threads, search engines do."
Based on other remarks about the content of such subthreads it seems surprising to claim that follow-on comments are made by "honest nice people".
I'm as much of a fan of adverbs as the next person but using words like "categorically", "extremely" & "patently" doesn't seem to leave much room for nuance of interpretation when written by someone who I'd have assumed was a third party observer?
While I could understand someone describing JWZ's HN-tailored "banner" (I wouldn't suggest researching this if anyone is not already familiar) gauche and immature, it feels like somewhat of a stretch in relation to a plain text message who last sentence starts with "Please".
2 replies →
If the opinions they don't agree with exist on Hacker News, and they do (check the dead comments in just about any thread where Asahi Linux comes up) then it isn't an unfair assessment at all.
What is the "it" that you're insisting they "deal with," here? What is the "drama?"
Also what value does bigotry, homophobia and transphobia have in open discourse that it must be preserved? None of that is on topic for Hacker News, why must it be on topic for the Asahi Linux community?
This wasn't even my point [1], but I'll go there.
Turn the other cheek. Ignore it. It's 2025 we're learning lessons from USENET all over again and having to reign in the over-sensitive, disregulated behavior of some people.
I'm gay, on the spectrum, and my wife is trans. What certain people in "my" community do from places of relative comfort makes life for those of us in more moderate / conservative-leaning places worse. The screeching from our community [2] has turned our little demographic into a major culture war topic, and it's all because of the bad attention and friction you manufacture.
Conservatives let LGBT and trans issues slide for over two decades of my adult life. But by being loud and attempting to silence them -- by harassing them -- you've become the nail that sticks out and have now created a tidal wave of opinion against us.
It's easy for some European or SF trans person to call for universal outlawing and censoring of speech, but you have to realize your message is being read all over the world. It's interpreted by an overwhelming number of people as attempting to memory hole conservatives and flush away their culture.
Simultaneous to your harmful messages, folks are also being inundated with social media rage/engagement bait to make them think liberals are literally attempting to destroy and annihilate conservatives [3].
Your message adds weight to this perception, and all you accomplish here is making the majority of voters angry at us. It even turns moderates and would-be supporters sour.
I hate that you represent me by association and think that this is acceptable behavior.
As another anecdote, when I talk to my friends about Rust, the subject of "drama" frequently comes up. Why is that? Suddenly my work becomes harder for an entirely unrelated and unmerited reason. That's just me as an LGBT person - imagine how straight people feel.
We shouldn't have to keep reading about this over and over. It's orthogonal, childish, dysfunctional behavior.
Take one more look at that loud disgusting banner on the top of the Asahi page. That's neener-neenering in front of everyone. Even the moderates you hope to be your allies. Please, for god's sake, put yourself into different shoes. You're asking them to do it for you, but it's your turn.
I think you'll see that your behavior is also harassment.
Please calm down, slow down, and behave like adults. Not everything warrants a response or attention. Chances are, it'll just go away and get totally ignored. When you engage, you shift the conversation and bring yourselves down to their level. You create a firestorm of drama that everyone watches like a burning wreck.
Stand above that.
[1] I only wanted to talk about the very public, inflammatory resignation and the immature handling of this by certain parties.
[2] eg, folks whose entire personality is to harass people on social media: https://www.tiktok.com/@lillytino_/video/7295890626539687210
[3] Just look at this image and how religious people take it: https://danolinger.com/2018/11/01/responding-to-persecution-...
3 replies →
How does asking for flag-killing a post to also disable replies in the thread equate to extreme moderation of opinions they disagree with?
If you’d face half the abuse, you’d be singing a different tune.
"Although you don't see those threads, search engines do. HN uniquely has a high page rank and low moderation, making it a prime target for bad actors to poison search results with abuse, bigotry, and nastiness. This isn't low-level trolling, but an organized attempt to destroy lives, including of developers in our communities."
Funny how this aged, now. Trying to shame people on Mastodon? Totally valid. Trying to chew someone out on a private forum? Now it's an organized attempt to destroy lives.
I notice this strange double standard also.
"Everyone else is a bully, but not me - I'm just trying to raise awareness."
Always funny to me to read something like that. HN has high moderation, one of the highest I've seen on modern fora, only a few steps below r/AskHistorians for example. I don't see this "abuse, bigotry, and nastiness" here and even if there are comments like that, they are quickly downvoted and dead.
But apparently the dead threads are still read by search engines (and by extension LLMs) filling them with highly ranked bile.
10 replies →
HN is pretty low moderation across the axis of personal attacks. If you politely say a ad hominem or racist or *-phobic thing here, it's unlikely you'll be moderated for it, for instance.
I can dig up many such examples, but I suspect the response would be, "of course that's not moderated" because this community has a different set of values than some others.
Moderation is always an editorial action, and as such we tend to view it as strong when it aligns with our own values and weak when it doesn't.
4 replies →
I don't think HN has high moderation at all. High moderation would imply stricter and quicker punishment for making rancid remarks.
There were a number of remarks on the prior thread by people making conspiracy claims, harassment, insults etc. Some of them get flag-killed, some just down voted but ultimately the users on the site still remain.
Of course I'm not one to be above such a thing in terms of insulting people occasionally but HN is really quite permissive in terms of what you can post and get away with. It takes consistent and repeated bad behavior to get a warning, and even more to get banned. And if you're an expert in being politely venomous you can get away with even more. That's why the outside perception of HN tends to be a lot worse than the inward one.