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I'd love to get a discussion going on whether people support or oppose the flagging (and subsequent disappearance) of politically charged topics on HN. While HN

by md224 9y ago

I'd love to get a discussion going on whether people support or oppose the flagging (and subsequent disappearance) of politically charged topics on HN. While HN is not a politics site, some of these censored topics have been tech-related. I guess it comes down to a value judgement: is it worth discussing tech politics even if it spawns flamewars and heated arguments? I think it's worth it, but this is certainly debatable. Curious what other HN users think. My own thinking is that political discussion between opposing factions is always going to be contentious, but that doesn't mean it should be suppressed. However, angry rhetoric can lead to further polarization, so I'm not sure what the right approach is. Edit: funny enough, this topic itself was flagged and killed! I've vouched it, but I'm open to hearing arguments for why this link doesn't belong.

reitanqild 9y ago
I thing some of these topics are the most interestng we have. I mostly accept that they don’t belong on HN though. But it feels deeply hypocritical when some political stories stay on the front page for hours until more information starts to arrive and they get flagged off swiftly.
jacquesm 9y ago
So, I've vouched for it too, mainly because it would be nice to have the option on HN to simply ignore the flags for those who feel they can handle it and don't need to be told by others what they can and can not discuss. It would be a pretty simple affair software wise, those that need it can have their safe space and those that don't can discuss whatever they want without being shouted down. Seems like the optimal solution to me.
- stormbrew 9y ago
  The thing about no moderation spaces (above and beyond legal requirements) is that they become tools of organized trolling efforts (harassment campaigns and the like). Having an unmoderated space on the internet is basically the social equivalent of having an open smtp relay. But if this "ignore flags" version of hackernews were to have any moderation at all to prevent the above, it would basically mean forcing extra work on the moderators of hackernews to cater to a handful of people interested in genuine discussion and a vast army of people interested in using it to troll, harass, and generally be awful to people.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    > But if this "ignore flags" version of hackernews were to have any moderation at all to prevent the above, it would basically mean forcing extra work on the moderators of hackernews to cater to a handful of people interested in genuine discussion and a vast army of people interested in using it to troll, harass, and generally be awful to people. I highly doubt that. Typically a normal discussion (such as this one) is underway and the suddenly the whole thing is killed. That's rude, to put it mildly and I see absolutely no harm in letting those discussions continue with the normal 'up/down' vote mechanism taking care of the moderation. Flagging just affects the ordering of the stories and does not have anything to do with the comments within those stories. Note that there is no reason that you would not be able to discuss this site and yet the discussion is flagged so the majority of HN will never see it. I don't like that, I think it puts too much weight to the flags in relation to the upvotes.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - Cozumel 9y ago
    So limit contributions to active valid accounts (minimum membership time / minimum karma level etc), again from a software point of view that's beyond simple. Whether it's the right thing or not for HN is another matter.
DanBC 9y ago
> funny enough, this topic itself was flagged and killed! Flagged because of the stupid -rule breaking- title.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  What is rule breaking about it?
  - DanBC 9y ago
    Come off it, you've been here long enough to know that it's an editorialised title.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      Ah in that sense. Oh golly, you're right. Well best we don't discuss that then, who knows what kind of subversive stuff might be said.
      - mzh0 9y ago
        No, i can ensure you the title is same as what i submitted
john_moscow 9y ago
Maybe just add a special topic flag "politics" and let everyone have a convenient switch in the profile settings whether they want to see those topics in the feed or not?
- forthefuture 9y ago
  That topic flag is called reddit.com/r/politics. We are already choosing to come here instead of there.
  - DanielBMarkham 9y ago
    I have always bowed to the wishes of PG and the mods when it comes to calling out articles as too "hot" This is a funky one, though. The issue itself is about how politics affects what we can say and not say online. In that way, it's a "meta" issue. I can still understand the flagging and death, but damn. Google, Apple, and Facebook are huge monsters that control hundreds of billions of dollars in cash and virtually everything a huge chunk of the world's population sees and does. This is a tech story. It's a politics story. It's a story about business. It's all of that. This is the first time I've felt the tech community actively sticking their head in the sand. For ten or twenty years, we've created the internet and all the things people use today. When asked about morals, ethics, and politics, we've just said something like "We make the tools. We're not responsible for their use" And here we are in a security and surveillance state that we've created. We're refusing to even talk about Google's desired monoculture because we're unable to maintain civil discourse. I get it. But fuck me. Something's really wrong here. I can't help but feel that the tech community at large -- and HN in particular -- is no longer working towards the betterment of mankind. Something is terribly broken. And we had a big part in breaking it.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      > This is the first time I've felt the tech community actively sticking their head in the sand. This happens all the time. Techies being 'apolitical' is a huge problem, and of course those very same techies then turn around and scream blue murder when laws are made that hurt their interests or when their tech is used to further some political goal they do not agree with.
mzh0 9y ago
Mysteriously, many thread, including this thread itself, has been revived from dead (but could possibly still be flagged): For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14962366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14962366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14961857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14961857 And it seems this thread itself is excluded in HN top
zitterbewegung 9y ago
The problem that HN faces is the fact that as social news aggregators become larger and larger the quality and type of user changes. To enforce this we have flagging and removal of content. The problem with this aggregators is enforcement and policing doesn't scale. Also, as the aggregator becomes larger people want to discuss more and more topics. Personally I would rather have a HN that doesn't have politically charged topics. Although some of those topics are relevant to the community if we start letting more and more political topics then we can have factions of users and once that starts HN won't be fun to read anymore. Reddit attempted to solve this through subreddits but that didn't work. Slashdot used moderation. Digg died because they released a new version. I suppose either the censorship or the flagging and removal of political topics and otherwise will be the thing that eliminates HN. I think that any social news aggregator has a shelf life and you can't keep it from degrading to either something you hate and or something that doesn't serve the people who run the site.

by md224 9y ago

reitanqild 9y ago

I thing some of these topics are the most interestng we have. I mostly accept that they don’t belong on HN though. But it feels deeply hypocritical when some political stories stay on the front page for hours until more information starts to arrive and they get flagged off swiftly.

jacquesm 9y ago

So, I've vouched for it too, mainly because it would be nice to have the option on HN to simply ignore the flags for those who feel they can handle it and don't need to be told by others what they can and can not discuss. It would be a pretty simple affair software wise, those that need it can have their safe space and those that don't can discuss whatever they want without being shouted down. Seems like the optimal solution to me.

stormbrew 9y ago
The thing about no moderation spaces (above and beyond legal requirements) is that they become tools of organized trolling efforts (harassment campaigns and the like). Having an unmoderated space on the internet is basically the social equivalent of having an open smtp relay. But if this "ignore flags" version of hackernews were to have any moderation at all to prevent the above, it would basically mean forcing extra work on the moderators of hackernews to cater to a handful of people interested in genuine discussion and a vast army of people interested in using it to troll, harass, and generally be awful to people.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > But if this "ignore flags" version of hackernews were to have any moderation at all to prevent the above, it would basically mean forcing extra work on the moderators of hackernews to cater to a handful of people interested in genuine discussion and a vast army of people interested in using it to troll, harass, and generally be awful to people. I highly doubt that. Typically a normal discussion (such as this one) is underway and the suddenly the whole thing is killed. That's rude, to put it mildly and I see absolutely no harm in letting those discussions continue with the normal 'up/down' vote mechanism taking care of the moderation. Flagging just affects the ordering of the stories and does not have anything to do with the comments within those stories. Note that there is no reason that you would not be able to discuss this site and yet the discussion is flagged so the majority of HN will never see it. I don't like that, I think it puts too much weight to the flags in relation to the upvotes.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- Cozumel 9y ago
  So limit contributions to active valid accounts (minimum membership time / minimum karma level etc), again from a software point of view that's beyond simple. Whether it's the right thing or not for HN is another matter.

DanBC 9y ago

> funny enough, this topic itself was flagged and killed! Flagged because of the stupid -rule breaking- title.

jacquesm 9y ago
What is rule breaking about it?
- DanBC 9y ago
  Come off it, you've been here long enough to know that it's an editorialised title.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Ah in that sense. Oh golly, you're right. Well best we don't discuss that then, who knows what kind of subversive stuff might be said.
    - mzh0 9y ago
      No, i can ensure you the title is same as what i submitted

john_moscow 9y ago

Maybe just add a special topic flag "politics" and let everyone have a convenient switch in the profile settings whether they want to see those topics in the feed or not?

forthefuture 9y ago
That topic flag is called reddit.com/r/politics. We are already choosing to come here instead of there.
- DanielBMarkham 9y ago
  I have always bowed to the wishes of PG and the mods when it comes to calling out articles as too "hot" This is a funky one, though. The issue itself is about how politics affects what we can say and not say online. In that way, it's a "meta" issue. I can still understand the flagging and death, but damn. Google, Apple, and Facebook are huge monsters that control hundreds of billions of dollars in cash and virtually everything a huge chunk of the world's population sees and does. This is a tech story. It's a politics story. It's a story about business. It's all of that. This is the first time I've felt the tech community actively sticking their head in the sand. For ten or twenty years, we've created the internet and all the things people use today. When asked about morals, ethics, and politics, we've just said something like "We make the tools. We're not responsible for their use" And here we are in a security and surveillance state that we've created. We're refusing to even talk about Google's desired monoculture because we're unable to maintain civil discourse. I get it. But fuck me. Something's really wrong here. I can't help but feel that the tech community at large -- and HN in particular -- is no longer working towards the betterment of mankind. Something is terribly broken. And we had a big part in breaking it.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    > This is the first time I've felt the tech community actively sticking their head in the sand. This happens all the time. Techies being 'apolitical' is a huge problem, and of course those very same techies then turn around and scream blue murder when laws are made that hurt their interests or when their tech is used to further some political goal they do not agree with.

mzh0 9y ago

Mysteriously, many thread, including this thread itself, has been revived from dead (but could possibly still be flagged): For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14962366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14962366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14961857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14961857 And it seems this thread itself is excluded in HN top

zitterbewegung 9y ago

The problem that HN faces is the fact that as social news aggregators become larger and larger the quality and type of user changes. To enforce this we have flagging and removal of content. The problem with this aggregators is enforcement and policing doesn't scale. Also, as the aggregator becomes larger people want to discuss more and more topics. Personally I would rather have a HN that doesn't have politically charged topics. Although some of those topics are relevant to the community if we start letting more and more political topics then we can have factions of users and once that starts HN won't be fun to read anymore. Reddit attempted to solve this through subreddits but that didn't work. Slashdot used moderation. Digg died because they released a new version. I suppose either the censorship or the flagging and removal of political topics and otherwise will be the thing that eliminates HN. I think that any social news aggregator has a shelf life and you can't keep it from degrading to either something you hate and or something that doesn't serve the people who run the site.