I'll give you the "party line" (i.e. best-effort understanding of HN-moderators perspective) for why articles like this are frequently flagged:
1) The entire discussion is a rehashing of the exact same points every time the topic is posted, and not very insightful
2) The participation rate for experts (or even authors) in the discussed field/topic is very low (compared to programming topics)
3) The discussion rarely stays civil and requires excessive moderation
An observation (have no verbatim quote, but believe from dang) is that there is a significant base of "anti-political", otherwise "known-good" HN participants, that flag topics like this preemptively pretty much regardless of perspective and exact topic (presumably for above reasons). You can certainly still blame the flagging on bots or Zionists, but it's almost certainly not only those.
You left out the parts about how and when we turn flags off, about how a certain amount of political overlap is both necessary and inevitable, but that it also can't be too much. All of those are important factors, and I've posted many explanations of them:
We can't, however, turn off flags on threads we don't know about. You guys (I don't mean you personally!) unintentionally assume that we're omniscient. We aren't, so we need people to tell us about cases like this.
In this case, no one told us; I ran across it randomly. Randomness is only good for partial results. For reliable message delivery, someone needs to email hn@ycombinator.com, and please remember that it takes time to work through that (er) rather active inbox.
This is such a garbage assessment. I have don't see post of pro-Israel companies and startups that fund/enable this massacre being flagged for political content?
What is this facade of impartialness and too much politics? Tell that to the people massacred.
> there is a significant base of "anti-political", otherwise "known-good" HN participants, that flag topics like this preemptively pretty much regardless of perspective
I'm always sceptical of this given it doesn't happen to similar posts about Iran.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I think it also touches on issues of interest to the hn crowd (it's being reported on a YC-incubated platform!), and one especially unique things about the reporting is the spatial reconstruction of the scene, which is not a degree of detail you typically get, and limits the number of variations of interpretations possible.
I also think issues of censorship are very high on the list of topics of interest on HN and few topics are subject to more extensive censorship than reporting on events in Israel and Palestine.
The forensic reconstruction to this level of detail is novel and interesting, both for the methods deployed and for the likelihood that the half-life of unsolved war crimes appears to be decreasing.
Dang, I'm writing this reply as a target of antisemitic hate. I am not strictly a Jew (though I am often mistaken for one due to both name and appearance). My relatives were hunted and gassed in WW2.
The poster you are responding to is making ha joke:ish observation (probably badly communicated) that the modus operandi in the Israeli Government is to label all evidence of their crimes "antisemitic" no matter how truthful they are, no matter how many facts, no matter how vile their actions look.
Netanyahu et al have nurtured a context where there is no difference between real antisemitic hate and valid criticism. He and the people like him equate truth to antisemitism. Something which hurts many of us.
No. Your message is. A lot of people commit mortal sin of logical fallacy by extending the responsibility for actions of certain group of people to everyone sharing with them ethnicity or religion. It‘s the stupidity worth of the strongest condemnation given the context.
It‘s not jews committing war crimes in Gaza, it‘s zionists. It‘s not muslims or Palestinians planning and executing terrorist attacks, it‘s religious extremists and far right nationalists. When there will be common understanding of this simple truth, fighting the root causes will be much easier.
But it's not all zionists committing war crimes in Gaza, it's the IDF. And it's not all IDF members, only some individuals. And its not all of those some individuals, only some of their brain and trigger finger. And it's not all the time, only some of the time.
Zionism is the idea of self determination of Jews in their homeland. You separate Jews from zionists. How would you call the Palestinian self determination movement, would you separate it from the rest of the Palestinians? Would you call that group for committing war crimes?
This is 1) extending responsibility for actions of induviduals to everyone sharing with them ethnicity or religion 2) a display of anti-semitic bigotry
Otherwise it, like most tech heavy investigations, showcase how much useful information there is fly around out there in the air just waiting to be hoovered up - and (althought not the case here) YC funded companies happen to be at the frontlines of such work
In case you didn't see them yet, here are some of my other comments in this thread:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Specifically, when I looked through who had flagged the current post, I saw the usual coalition between users who appear to be consistently flagging for political reasons, and other users who have quite different flagging patterns than that. In any case, virtually all of the accounts that flagged the thread were established HN users.
Sometimes when people bring this concern up, I go through and make a list of other stories that the same accounts had flagged, to illustrate the point that their flags are not exclusively targeting one specific topic or vector. I've done that here in a collapsed reply, if anyone wants to take a look.
I hope this explanation helps - your posts in this thread seemed to me to be in good faith so I wanted to respond in kind. If you still have a question that my comments and links to past explanations haven't answered, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
I'll give you the "party line" (i.e. best-effort understanding of HN-moderators perspective) for why articles like this are frequently flagged:
1) The entire discussion is a rehashing of the exact same points every time the topic is posted, and not very insightful
2) The participation rate for experts (or even authors) in the discussed field/topic is very low (compared to programming topics)
3) The discussion rarely stays civil and requires excessive moderation
An observation (have no verbatim quote, but believe from dang) is that there is a significant base of "anti-political", otherwise "known-good" HN participants, that flag topics like this preemptively pretty much regardless of perspective and exact topic (presumably for above reasons). You can certainly still blame the flagging on bots or Zionists, but it's almost certainly not only those.
You left out the parts about how and when we turn flags off, about how a certain amount of political overlap is both necessary and inevitable, but that it also can't be too much. All of those are important factors, and I've posted many explanations of them:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=flags%20off%20turn%20by%3Adang...
We can't, however, turn off flags on threads we don't know about. You guys (I don't mean you personally!) unintentionally assume that we're omniscient. We aren't, so we need people to tell us about cases like this.
In this case, no one told us; I ran across it randomly. Randomness is only good for partial results. For reliable message delivery, someone needs to email hn@ycombinator.com, and please remember that it takes time to work through that (er) rather active inbox.
I literally can’t say anything pro humanity without it being flagged even if it hints negativity towards Israel.
Can you remember any pro-Israeli posts you turned flags off for since the October 7 attack?
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This is such a garbage assessment. I have don't see post of pro-Israel companies and startups that fund/enable this massacre being flagged for political content?
What is this facade of impartialness and too much politics? Tell that to the people massacred.
> there is a significant base of "anti-political", otherwise "known-good" HN participants, that flag topics like this preemptively pretty much regardless of perspective
I'm always sceptical of this given it doesn't happen to similar posts about Iran.
What are you talking about? Iran topics get flagged at least as often as Gaza (in proportion to the amount to posts on the topic).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46624529
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This is most certainly not something that is covered on TV news. Seems on topic to me.
I think it also touches on issues of interest to the hn crowd (it's being reported on a YC-incubated platform!), and one especially unique things about the reporting is the spatial reconstruction of the scene, which is not a degree of detail you typically get, and limits the number of variations of interpretations possible.
I also think issues of censorship are very high on the list of topics of interest on HN and few topics are subject to more extensive censorship than reporting on events in Israel and Palestine.
2 replies →
The forensic reconstruction to this level of detail is novel and interesting, both for the methods deployed and for the likelihood that the half-life of unsolved war crimes appears to be decreasing.
[flagged]
[flagged]
[flagged]
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[flagged]
Edit: if https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Dang, I'm writing this reply as a target of antisemitic hate. I am not strictly a Jew (though I am often mistaken for one due to both name and appearance). My relatives were hunted and gassed in WW2.
The poster you are responding to is making ha joke:ish observation (probably badly communicated) that the modus operandi in the Israeli Government is to label all evidence of their crimes "antisemitic" no matter how truthful they are, no matter how many facts, no matter how vile their actions look.
Netanyahu et al have nurtured a context where there is no difference between real antisemitic hate and valid criticism. He and the people like him equate truth to antisemitism. Something which hurts many of us.
Please understand this.
9 replies →
No. Your message is. A lot of people commit mortal sin of logical fallacy by extending the responsibility for actions of certain group of people to everyone sharing with them ethnicity or religion. It‘s the stupidity worth of the strongest condemnation given the context.
It‘s not jews committing war crimes in Gaza, it‘s zionists. It‘s not muslims or Palestinians planning and executing terrorist attacks, it‘s religious extremists and far right nationalists. When there will be common understanding of this simple truth, fighting the root causes will be much easier.
I think GP was making a joke - since zionists claim any anti-zionist behavior is anti-semitic.
4 replies →
But it's not all zionists committing war crimes in Gaza, it's the IDF. And it's not all IDF members, only some individuals. And its not all of those some individuals, only some of their brain and trigger finger. And it's not all the time, only some of the time.
We mustn't generalize.
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Zionism is the idea of self determination of Jews in their homeland. You separate Jews from zionists. How would you call the Palestinian self determination movement, would you separate it from the rest of the Palestinians? Would you call that group for committing war crimes?
1 reply →
Their message didn't make any of the extrapolations that you're suggesting and I don't think that the post itself does that either.
3 replies →
> why is this flagged ?
Because flaggers deem it to be anti-semitic
> committing war crimes in Gaza, it‘s zionists
This is 1) extending responsibility for actions of induviduals to everyone sharing with them ethnicity or religion 2) a display of anti-semitic bigotry
Otherwise it, like most tech heavy investigations, showcase how much useful information there is fly around out there in the air just waiting to be hoovered up - and (althought not the case here) YC funded companies happen to be at the frontlines of such work
2 replies →
I believe religion is a reasonable extension. Some of them explicitly call for murdering unbelievers.
2 replies →
[flagged]
@dang any explanation for this being flagged?
Am I still allowed to ask why the moderators don't want people to read and discuss this particular technology story?
(@dang doesn't work. I only saw this randomly.)
Your question is answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47141443, but the short version is that your assumption that we see everything is incorrect.
I also would appreciate knowing if the mods see this. I'm worried that flagging is possibly automated and vulnerable to campaigning.
We eventually saw it, but only randomly.
In case you didn't see them yet, here are some of my other comments in this thread:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Specifically, when I looked through who had flagged the current post, I saw the usual coalition between users who appear to be consistently flagging for political reasons, and other users who have quite different flagging patterns than that. In any case, virtually all of the accounts that flagged the thread were established HN users.
Sometimes when people bring this concern up, I go through and make a list of other stories that the same accounts had flagged, to illustrate the point that their flags are not exclusively targeting one specific topic or vector. I've done that here in a collapsed reply, if anyone wants to take a look.
I hope this explanation helps - your posts in this thread seemed to me to be in good faith so I wanted to respond in kind. If you still have a question that my comments and links to past explanations haven't answered, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
5 replies →