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I'm quite curious about this article, less about the words, more about how it's being received. It has 43 upvotes in 41 minutes. For a rather bland subject, t

I'm quite curious about this article, less about the words, more about how it's being received. It has 43 upvotes in 41 minutes. For a rather bland subject, that's not half bad (point wise), potentially motivated by the political conflict involved, but that happens. However, in the time I've queued it in my "morning reading", I've refreshed it quite a few times and watched it flag, unflag, flag, unflag at least 5-6 rotations as I've tried to post this comment. I'm legitimately curious as to why there's so much distaste for this with so little discussion. There is certainly very little evidence to the claim of the article, and that could be called out as HN has an excellent (I mean this honestly, comments are very quick to say "this article has no substance, here is why" and I see that as a plus) history of, but the overall question of the potential for political censorship through the increasingly few gatekeepers of walled garden web content does raise some meta questions I've seen HN discuss on many other occasions with far less prompting. I guess I'm asking two things. 1. Although there is not much empiricism in the article, is there not a meaningful discussion to be had about the above; and 2. I'm curious as to what would incite people to want to flag so hard rather than let a thread get some immediate momentum and then die off from lack of content as it is like to. (It's not even as with the snowden releases where the entire front page was snowden for a good few weeks :) )

djrogers 10y ago
> There is certainly very little evidence to the claim of the article Little evidence? The claim is that this app was rejected and Trump satire apps are allowed - what evidence are you expecting other than the existence of the Punch Trump style apps on the App Store? Do you want a letter signed by Tim Cook saying that the App Store policies are intentionally biased?
- existencebox 10y ago
  You're providing evidence that the outcome exists in the real world. This is true. You are not providing evidence (neither did they) for the motive they described. A letter would be nice (to the QA testers who vet these games) but because I (having been a QA at one point who could have had the ability to make similar decisions about what gets into games with almost no oversight, training, or checks+balances, albeit for a much more no-name group) really doubt that's the situation, I would also be more swayed by demonstrating a track record for single-party support historically, and potentially contrasting with other app stores over that time period, since I could absolutely see this occuring due to what I mention. (Improper checks and balances, lack of clear guidelines, less formal/consistent vetting process) My "there is no evidence" should be taken as "the article seemed more conviction by 'THIS IS WRONG' than conviction by 'we find these systemic issues, here is the support for them'. In fact, it loops back to my original comment, in that both the articles and the flaggers were making a statement while providing very little other than the statement itself to support it.
- cscurmudgeon 10y ago
  A quick search shows titles like "Never Hillary", "Avoid Hillary", "Hillary Clinton Cross the Road". What do you say about that? I mentioned this in another comment, but was downvoted for exposing obvious buffoonery.
- almostApatriot1 10y ago
  There are satire apps on Itunes targeting Hillary Clinton. It's very easy to make your case when you cherrypick one data point out of thousands. Here's an app called Avoid Hillary[0] where you're Bill Clinton trying to dodge his wife. I honestly don't see how a boxing game with Donald Trump is any worse. [0] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/avoid-hillary/id1009997468?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/avoid-hillary/id1009997468?m...
sandworm101 10y ago
It has both 'Hillary' and 'Trump' in the title. Between those who care too much about one or the other, and those sick to death of the mindless prattle, political stories are going to get flagged.
MaysonL 10y ago
I do find it interesting that all of the instances of "Hillary", "Hillary Clinton", or "Mrs. Clinton" are hyperlinks to the WaPo Hillary Clinton topic page, while none of the Trump references are links…
- dogma1138 10y ago
  This looks more like an oddity of their CMS, as contextual content tagging is usually automated. That said considering just how loosely trump throws the word "lawsuit" around and actually acts upon it, it wouldn't surprise me if WaPo and some other media outlets disabled auto-tagging on his name.

djrogers 10y ago

> There is certainly very little evidence to the claim of the article Little evidence? The claim is that this app was rejected and Trump satire apps are allowed - what evidence are you expecting other than the existence of the Punch Trump style apps on the App Store? Do you want a letter signed by Tim Cook saying that the App Store policies are intentionally biased?

existencebox 10y ago
You're providing evidence that the outcome exists in the real world. This is true. You are not providing evidence (neither did they) for the motive they described. A letter would be nice (to the QA testers who vet these games) but because I (having been a QA at one point who could have had the ability to make similar decisions about what gets into games with almost no oversight, training, or checks+balances, albeit for a much more no-name group) really doubt that's the situation, I would also be more swayed by demonstrating a track record for single-party support historically, and potentially contrasting with other app stores over that time period, since I could absolutely see this occuring due to what I mention. (Improper checks and balances, lack of clear guidelines, less formal/consistent vetting process) My "there is no evidence" should be taken as "the article seemed more conviction by 'THIS IS WRONG' than conviction by 'we find these systemic issues, here is the support for them'. In fact, it loops back to my original comment, in that both the articles and the flaggers were making a statement while providing very little other than the statement itself to support it.
cscurmudgeon 10y ago
A quick search shows titles like "Never Hillary", "Avoid Hillary", "Hillary Clinton Cross the Road". What do you say about that? I mentioned this in another comment, but was downvoted for exposing obvious buffoonery.
almostApatriot1 10y ago
There are satire apps on Itunes targeting Hillary Clinton. It's very easy to make your case when you cherrypick one data point out of thousands. Here's an app called Avoid Hillary[0] where you're Bill Clinton trying to dodge his wife. I honestly don't see how a boxing game with Donald Trump is any worse. [0] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/avoid-hillary/id1009997468?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/avoid-hillary/id1009997468?m...

sandworm101 10y ago

It has both 'Hillary' and 'Trump' in the title. Between those who care too much about one or the other, and those sick to death of the mindless prattle, political stories are going to get flagged.

MaysonL 10y ago

I do find it interesting that all of the instances of "Hillary", "Hillary Clinton", or "Mrs. Clinton" are hyperlinks to the WaPo Hillary Clinton topic page, while none of the Trump references are links…

dogma1138 10y ago
This looks more like an oddity of their CMS, as contextual content tagging is usually automated. That said considering just how loosely trump throws the word "lawsuit" around and actually acts upon it, it wouldn't surprise me if WaPo and some other media outlets disabled auto-tagging on his name.