7 ms·

Now if only you had some way to show how many people are shadow-banned or have their posts automatically buried. People seem to think this place is better than

Now if only you had some way to show how many people are shadow-banned or have their posts automatically buried. People seem to think this place is better than Facebook, Reddit or all the other vote-based, algorithm-driven discussion forums that encourage groupthink, but that's probably because they've never been guilty of posting an unpopular opinion. It might be eye-opening if they could see how heavily manipulated these discussions really are.

username223 9y ago
> People seem to think this place is better than Facebook, Reddit or all the other vote-based, algorithm-driven discussion forums... Reddit and FB are largely algorithm-driven; in this joint, things get personal.
- explainplease 9y ago
  So the algorithm is executed on wetware. Still an algorithm. ;)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
justaduder 9y ago
I'm away on Christmas vacation, but my home IP has been banned. Never been clear why, except that I have expressed some views about banking, Tesla and some well-known posters who like to bully people that aren't part of the Hackernews hivemind. I enjoy the site as a news aggregator, but this place is an echo chamber.
- grzm 9y ago
  You can contact the mods via the Contact link in the footer if you’re looking for more information regarding your IP address.
- striking 9y ago
  http://news.ycombinator.com/unban?ip=<ip http://news.ycombinator.com/unban?ip=<ip address> You may have sent requests too quickly or something.
- megous 9y ago
  The same thing happened to me sometime in the last week. My computer was off for several days (christmas), and when I turned it on, I had an IP ban. Using proxy works, but it's a needless hassle. If I delete the cookies, everything is ok, until I click the login link. From then on all I get is 403 on all pages. Annoying to say the least is, that there doesn't seem to be any auto-unban timeout. And I don't comment all that much. Last month it was a comment every three days or so. It made me think about the value of commenting for me and I decided to stop posting and lurk. Most of the value for me is in the lurking anyway.
krapp 9y ago
Hacker News is aggressively moderated, that's never been a secret, and the mods will override consensus when they feel like it. That's what many people here like about the site. If you want more free conversation, you can and should go elsewhere. Hacker News just isn't that place, as much as some of us wish it could be. One person's groupthink is another person's culture, after all.
- gthtjtkt 9y ago
  > If you want more free conversation, you can and should go elsewhere. Just like people who don't want Trump to be their president should move to Canada, right? Run from the problem instead of trying to fix it... always a good choice.
  - krapp 9y ago
    >Just like people who don't want Trump to be their president should move to Canada, right? The US is, at least nominally, a democracy, whereas all websites are essentially dictatorships. It's not even remotely the same. >Run from the problem instead of trying to fix it... always a good choice. I'm not suggesting running from anything, try to fix it if you like. You won't succeed, because most people don't consider it broken. Hacker News has a culture which doesn't consider free speech a priority, that's just the way it is.
    - gthtjtkt 9y ago
      The US is an oligarchy, which makes your willingness to defend corporations that trample on your civil rights even more unsettling.
      - krapp 9y ago
        >which makes your willingness to let corporations trample on your civil rights even more unsettling. No... Hacker News' moderation is not an example of a corporation trampling on anyone's civil rights. If that's what you meant. It seems you're primarily interested in steering this subthread into an uninteresting political tangent, so I'll leave you alone with whatever point it is you're trying to make.
QAPereo 9y ago
Speaking as someone who does just that... it’s a good site for the quality of the minds here, bad for the degree of censorship. Having said that, it feels more honest than FB. This is YC pursuing their own best interests very openly with HN... it isn’t “social media for the people.” I might prefer differences, but it’s easy to accept what’s offered when that offer is very clear at the outset. You also have to understand why draconian measures are in place... it’s weakness. This is a site full of people who could never be banned, only whichever account they use at the time. Tons of moderation online depends on user ignorance, and when that fails you have to roll out the dirty tricks. It is literally all they have which works at all. It’s this, or hiring a few hundred mods to sift through absolutely everything, which comes with its own issues. I’m not sure how you would improve this system without radically changing it, especially while trying to minimize the impact of bad actors.
- dang 9y ago
  > This is YC pursuing their own best interests very openly with HN That's actually true, but not in the sense that most people mean it. Usually when I hear this it means something like "HN promotes YC's business and suppresses criticism of YC", phrased in more sinister language. But that of course would be the dumbest way to operate such a site, especially with this crowd. The way we promote YC's interests is simply by trying to keep HN interesting. The most interesting HN is the most valuable-to-YC HN. That's why people come here, so that's all we optimize for. Literally everything we do with site moderation derives from that. For example, why do we moderate flamewars? Not because we secretly agree with one side or the other but because flamewars are repetitive and therefore bad for curiosity. Plus they encourage people to do worse things, so their damage extends forward in time. These are empirical observations, not moral edicts. We just look for what makes HN richer and more complex vs. what makes it dumber. Scorched earth makes it dumber. I remember years ago hearing a radio interview with the CEO of Costco. When asked, "What would you say to Wall Street analysts who criticize you for giving all those benefits to your employees?" he replied, "I would say have you ever run a major retailer?" Something similar is how I feel when people criticize how we moderate HN. The trouble isn't the criticism—I'd be delighted to be shown how to do this better. The trouble is that the criticisms usually aren't relevant to the actual problem of running HN, which is: how to maximize the interestingness of a public-anonymous internet forum dedicated to intellectual curiosity. Maximizing interestingness includes preventing decay. I hope that doesn't sound complainy. We're all lucky to have the opportunity to participate in an experiment like this. It derives from two things, btw: pg's own curiosity, which started the site, and the fact that the people running YC get HN's core value. It's an unusual set of conditions and we're all responsible for making something interesting of it. p.s. I forgot to add that there are also some formal ways that HN gives back to YC: https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs and https://news.ycombinator.com/launches https://news.ycombinator.com/launches.
tokenizerrr 9y ago
You can go to your profile and enable 'showdead'. This lets you see shadowbanned posts.
kw71 9y ago
I doubt it's the unpopular opinion but the presentation. Looks like we have no problems if you write to call attention to something that isn't normally thought about. Many people cannot do this without getting emotional and insulting though.

username223 9y ago

> People seem to think this place is better than Facebook, Reddit or all the other vote-based, algorithm-driven discussion forums... Reddit and FB are largely algorithm-driven; in this joint, things get personal.

explainplease 9y ago
So the algorithm is executed on wetware. Still an algorithm. ;)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

justaduder 9y ago

I'm away on Christmas vacation, but my home IP has been banned. Never been clear why, except that I have expressed some views about banking, Tesla and some well-known posters who like to bully people that aren't part of the Hackernews hivemind. I enjoy the site as a news aggregator, but this place is an echo chamber.

grzm 9y ago
You can contact the mods via the Contact link in the footer if you’re looking for more information regarding your IP address.
striking 9y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/unban?ip=<ip http://news.ycombinator.com/unban?ip=<ip address> You may have sent requests too quickly or something.
megous 9y ago
The same thing happened to me sometime in the last week. My computer was off for several days (christmas), and when I turned it on, I had an IP ban. Using proxy works, but it's a needless hassle. If I delete the cookies, everything is ok, until I click the login link. From then on all I get is 403 on all pages. Annoying to say the least is, that there doesn't seem to be any auto-unban timeout. And I don't comment all that much. Last month it was a comment every three days or so. It made me think about the value of commenting for me and I decided to stop posting and lurk. Most of the value for me is in the lurking anyway.

krapp 9y ago

Hacker News is aggressively moderated, that's never been a secret, and the mods will override consensus when they feel like it. That's what many people here like about the site. If you want more free conversation, you can and should go elsewhere. Hacker News just isn't that place, as much as some of us wish it could be. One person's groupthink is another person's culture, after all.

gthtjtkt 9y ago
> If you want more free conversation, you can and should go elsewhere. Just like people who don't want Trump to be their president should move to Canada, right? Run from the problem instead of trying to fix it... always a good choice.
- krapp 9y ago
  >Just like people who don't want Trump to be their president should move to Canada, right? The US is, at least nominally, a democracy, whereas all websites are essentially dictatorships. It's not even remotely the same. >Run from the problem instead of trying to fix it... always a good choice. I'm not suggesting running from anything, try to fix it if you like. You won't succeed, because most people don't consider it broken. Hacker News has a culture which doesn't consider free speech a priority, that's just the way it is.
  - gthtjtkt 9y ago
    The US is an oligarchy, which makes your willingness to defend corporations that trample on your civil rights even more unsettling.
    - krapp 9y ago
      >which makes your willingness to let corporations trample on your civil rights even more unsettling. No... Hacker News' moderation is not an example of a corporation trampling on anyone's civil rights. If that's what you meant. It seems you're primarily interested in steering this subthread into an uninteresting political tangent, so I'll leave you alone with whatever point it is you're trying to make.

QAPereo 9y ago

Speaking as someone who does just that... it’s a good site for the quality of the minds here, bad for the degree of censorship. Having said that, it feels more honest than FB. This is YC pursuing their own best interests very openly with HN... it isn’t “social media for the people.” I might prefer differences, but it’s easy to accept what’s offered when that offer is very clear at the outset. You also have to understand why draconian measures are in place... it’s weakness. This is a site full of people who could never be banned, only whichever account they use at the time. Tons of moderation online depends on user ignorance, and when that fails you have to roll out the dirty tricks. It is literally all they have which works at all. It’s this, or hiring a few hundred mods to sift through absolutely everything, which comes with its own issues. I’m not sure how you would improve this system without radically changing it, especially while trying to minimize the impact of bad actors.

dang 9y ago
> This is YC pursuing their own best interests very openly with HN That's actually true, but not in the sense that most people mean it. Usually when I hear this it means something like "HN promotes YC's business and suppresses criticism of YC", phrased in more sinister language. But that of course would be the dumbest way to operate such a site, especially with this crowd. The way we promote YC's interests is simply by trying to keep HN interesting. The most interesting HN is the most valuable-to-YC HN. That's why people come here, so that's all we optimize for. Literally everything we do with site moderation derives from that. For example, why do we moderate flamewars? Not because we secretly agree with one side or the other but because flamewars are repetitive and therefore bad for curiosity. Plus they encourage people to do worse things, so their damage extends forward in time. These are empirical observations, not moral edicts. We just look for what makes HN richer and more complex vs. what makes it dumber. Scorched earth makes it dumber. I remember years ago hearing a radio interview with the CEO of Costco. When asked, "What would you say to Wall Street analysts who criticize you for giving all those benefits to your employees?" he replied, "I would say have you ever run a major retailer?" Something similar is how I feel when people criticize how we moderate HN. The trouble isn't the criticism—I'd be delighted to be shown how to do this better. The trouble is that the criticisms usually aren't relevant to the actual problem of running HN, which is: how to maximize the interestingness of a public-anonymous internet forum dedicated to intellectual curiosity. Maximizing interestingness includes preventing decay. I hope that doesn't sound complainy. We're all lucky to have the opportunity to participate in an experiment like this. It derives from two things, btw: pg's own curiosity, which started the site, and the fact that the people running YC get HN's core value. It's an unusual set of conditions and we're all responsible for making something interesting of it. p.s. I forgot to add that there are also some formal ways that HN gives back to YC: https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs and https://news.ycombinator.com/launches https://news.ycombinator.com/launches.

tokenizerrr 9y ago

You can go to your profile and enable 'showdead'. This lets you see shadowbanned posts.

kw71 9y ago

I doubt it's the unpopular opinion but the presentation. Looks like we have no problems if you write to call attention to something that isn't normally thought about. Many people cannot do this without getting emotional and insulting though.