Comment by zzleeper
2 days ago
The problem is that a relatively small group of people (flaggers) just veto what we see and don't see. This made sense when we relied on flagging to just remove spam, useless posts, etc. but its now being used to remove anything that goes against MAGA.
I'm pretty sure that if you sqldump the list of flaggers of this and other posts (like the MN posts) you will find it's not a uniformly distributed list of users.
You've replied before I even had a chance to add a second sentence! Edit: admittedly it is taking longer than usual...
I've answered that point many times, e.g. recently here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46378818. If you take a look at that and have a question that isn't answered there (or here), I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
I haven't had a chance to look at the flaggers of these recent stories to verify that they fit the same pattern, but the pattern is so well-established that it would be shocking if they didn't. Btw, when you say "anything that goes against MAGA", the converse is the case as well (possibly even a bit more so). And when I say (quoting the comment I just linked to):
> There are some accounts that abuse flags in the following sense: they only ever flag political stories, and their flags are always aligned with the same political position. When we see accounts doing that, we usually take away their flagging rights.
... I didn't add that we do this the same way in either political direction, because that goes without saying, or ought to. But I'm saying it explicitly here.
This is a really rough spot, giving users the tools to remove visibility from a post will eventually get abused. I would genuinely be interested in some form of anonymized stats on the individual accounts and the posts they are flagging but that's a whole deal.
Am I wrong that there used to be a flagged option on the lists page, or am I missing where that is?
Phrasing political flaggers as "those who care about the quality of the site" already shows the hand here. You can argue downvotes are for disagreement, bit Flags are for slop and spam, not blocking what I don't agree on.
Flags are basically me waving my hands in the air calling for a mod. That's not something I do unless I feel it's outright harmful to the site. I'm a late commenter so I pretty much never have to flag postings (mostly just comment responses that come straight out of Twitter).
Honestly I don't ask for anonymized stats but rather public stats.
If you flag a post, you are inadvertedly trying to push a hn post away.
That's fine if the current moderation finds it okay and I respect HN moderation but once again another post gets flagged & dead.
If someone flags a post, they should have a reasoning why. So have it public, so that its easier to call people out if they are being unfair and it would make people more aware of who they are flagging and actually why.
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dang, first thank you for the moderation explanations
Besides those who flag political posts they don't agree with (which is a problem), I see a conflict in the comments between
those who think HN should be "politic-frei" because this is a "tech site" and "if I wanted to read about politics I'd go to reddit",
and those who agree this is a "tech/science/expand-curiosity-about-the-world site", and that's what makes HN a great community, but that it's sometimes, and especially recently, not possible to disentangle politics and tech. Musk/DOGE is a great example. No one asked Musk to drag politics into tech, and I wish I never had to read any articles about it and we could just talk about EVs and SpaceX, but he did, and so it's important to be able to talk about the impact which that has on tech, and on society, because this directly impacts us who are involved in tech/science. Tech/science does not exist in a vacuum.
Yes, both of those positions are ones that one hears in the comments, among others.
The 'official', if I have to call it that, position of HN is closer to the second than the first, although I wouldn't say identical.
> abuse flags in the following sense: they only ever flag political stories, and their flags are always aligned with the same political position.
One problem I see with this logic is that nowadays, the political submissions are overwhelmingly aligned with the positions of one "side" of specifically American politics.
FWIW, I flag submissions like this one because I would flag ideologically reversed ones (in this case, e.g. calling the Democrats communists or something like that) if they ever actually came up. But more importantly, I flag them because they're trying to establish the use of a highly subjective and derogatory term as fact.
And because in practice, dissent from TFA's point of view is at best walking a tightrope, and invariably the comment section fills with things that I can't see as kind or insightful at all, and which sneers and fulminates (or at least exhibits aggrieved diatribe) quite a bit.
This submission itself provides ample evidence. The comments are full of people throwing around language like "gestapo", "Nazi", "fascist" etc. in reference not even just to the Trump "regime", but to Republican voters, ordinary citizens making up roughly half the voting public. Engaging in very clear "with us or against us" rhetoric and writing off any opposition as inherently evil. As a more concrete example of dissent being suppressed, I just vouched for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46758137 which is clearly not objectionable.
I am a Canadian who has only ever voted for left-wing parties, but I still literally get called a Nazi because I suppose that terms like "fascist" (and, for that matter, "execution" and "genocide") aren't appropriate to apply to groups (respectively, actions/events) that specific political groups in the US want to apply them to, or because I point out the legal basis for justifying an LEO's use of lethal force, etc.
>I flag them because they're trying to establish the use of a highly subjective and derogatory term as fact.
Fascism isn't a subjective matter. We have loads of definition and the article makes a serious argument. If the quality of the article matches the subject matter, it's not flag worthy.
That's why I don't flag on ideology. I flag based on if 1) this inspires curiosity and 2) does not inspire hate (which is usually built into 1. You can't be curious of your biases are clouded by prejudice).
>or because I point out the legal basis for justifying an LEO's use of lethal force, etc.
There's a time and place. I'm very critical of Charlie Kirk, bit I gave it a week before o really went full hog on my tjoughts and actions. I have to look it back up, but I believe here I left it at "no one should be assassinated for their thoughts, even if those thoughts don't follow the golden rule" and left it at that.
Now, months later I will happily say that it quite the coincidence that so many Kirk articles here weren't flag while calling the situation what it is still gets flagged.
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They flag what goes against the topic of the website, and the HN guidelines. Not everyone wants every website to be about US politics, and that is not a right wing conspiracy.