Comment by tomhow
12 hours ago
Terms like "hidden" and "see everything" are in a title are clickbait. That's why the title would have been changed.
I've changed it again to match the article's original title, removing the clickbait part.
12 hours ago
Terms like "hidden" and "see everything" are in a title are clickbait. That's why the title would have been changed.
I've changed it again to match the article's original title, removing the clickbait part.
> Terms like "hidden" and "see everything" are in a title are clickbait.
The one containing "hidden" is the one you apparently changed it to originally - I don't think GP can, nor has any reason to - so you initially changed it to.. clickbait?
It seems a serious reach to call "see everything" clickbait.
> First-ever in-utero stem cell therapy for fetal spina bifida repair is safe, study finds
Currently 9th on the front page, is "is safe" also clickbait, since surely it's not 100.0% safe, just like with "see everything" it's surely not every single frame?
The large number of replies this renaming got in a short timeframe is because it's not in line with what we're used to when it comes to title changes on HN.
Can we discuss the issue without being accusatory and interrogatory. The point of the guidelines (about titles and everything else) is so we can discuss things curiously, without getting riled up.
OK I've looked in the logs and here's what happened.
The originally submitted title was: The workers behind Meta’s smart glasses can see everything.
That title was created by the submitter; it's not the original title and it's not a verbatim line of text from anywhere in the article.
It's also, arguably, clickbait, which I gather is why another moderator changed it to: A hidden workforce behind Meta’s new smart glasses.
Their intention was to make the title less baity and be closer to a verbatim line from the article (a line in the subheading is "Behind Meta’s new smart glasses lies a hidden workforce").
That's what triggered all the complaints.
I then changed it to a title that is a verbatim string from the HTML title, with the baity part at the end removed. That is bog standard title editing of the kind I've done every day for the several years I've been doing this job.
> First-ever in-utero stem cell therapy for fetal spina bifida repair is safe, study finds
"Is safe" is not an absolutist claim, but even since your comment was submitted, another moderator has – correctly – changed "first-ever" to "first", because "first-ever" is absolutist and baity.
> The large number of replies this renaming got in a short timeframe is because it's not in line with what we're used to when it comes to title changes on HN.
What I've described above is what HN moderators do several times each day. I think the reaction to this one is because it's a topic that inherently gets people riled up (understandably), and people's riled-up-ness will spill over to any perception that we're "suppressing" the story. But we're not suppressing the story; it is still at top spot, and it will stay on the front page for several hours and everyone will have every chance to read it and discuss it.
The title we've arrived at now is the one that's most consistent with the guidelines.
> and people's riled-up-ness will spill over to any perception that we're "suppressing" the story
It’s just a hot topic. The A hidden workforce one was way off, which is why people might have got that impression. I don’t think this was intentional, but I can understand where the backlash is coming from :)
Isn’t “nothing is truly safe” a common saying on HN? Safe is an absolute term and since nothing can be safe people usually avoid using safe as a standalone attribution to something. It is usually qualified in some way.
2 replies →
>>>I've never seen HN do this before, what's going on here?
>The large number of replies this renaming got in a short timeframe is because it's not in line with what we're used to when it comes to title changes on HN.
Perception management because overt censorship wasn't possible. It has too many eyes right now, but in a few hours the story will likely drop off the front page like a rock.
It's actually an improvement: In early 2025, a ridiculous amount of legitimate stories ended up flagged or mysteriously disappearing off the front page.
The current climate however has a lot more pissed off people, and that makes censorship harder.
People will downvote this, but the fact it's referring have never been explained properly by the moderators here.