Comment by dang
8 days ago
It's not bots flagging these things, it's regular users. Unless the regular users are bots, which seems unlikely.
When there's a major ongoing topic like this one, especially when it's divisive, the flags tend to come from a combination of (1) users who flag one-sidedly for what appear to be political reasons, and (2) users who don't think the story is on-topic for HN, whether because it's too sensational / flame-prone, too repetitive, or both. The first is a bad reason to flag and the second is a good reason. When we notice users flagging repeatedly for bad reasons, we take their flagging privileges away.
I agree with your moderation style generally, but
> Unless the regular users are bots, which seems unlikely
Why do you believe it’s unlikely? Are these regular users whose activity predates GPT3? Personally, since LLMs became commercially available I’ve just assumed that at least 50% of comments on the internet are bots.
Yes, many have been around for years and years.
Hey dang, thanks for the reply.
I didn't know you take the flagging away. That's not a bad idea.
I've been seeing you defend yourself all over the place these days. Sorry to make you feel like you had to do that here too.
My comment was more one of confusion, to clarify. Reading your comments these last few weeks, I trust in your decisions and those of the rest of the mods. HN is a really good place because of you all.
But I also know Elon is super petty/crazy and doing some monkey business is not above him. And yes, I know that sounds very conspiracy theory of me based on your comment here.
Suffice to say, maybe I'm just reacting to the sea change in HN participation and doing some 'self protection'. I like HN and then I recognize this flagging behavior on mostly just two men. Is there more flagging? Yes, but that's 'background' to me. These things don't square to my mind, so I go off to conspiracy land. Either way, my lizard brain is triggered and whether I like it or not, I can't help feeling 'bad/danger'. Maybe some self-work is needed.
Still, thanks a ton for all the time and the effort yo and the rest of the mod team put in here. I really appreciate it.