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Personally I wanted to discuss the article yesterday, but it was moved off the front-page too fast despite high interest. It is very common on HN for articles t

Personally I wanted to discuss the article yesterday, but it was moved off the front-page too fast despite high interest. It is very common on HN for articles that does not agree with or points out problems in the prevailing viewpoint to be blown off the front page. I think this is emblematic of how tyrannical some of the people subscribing to the prevailing Silicon Valley viewpoint are.

commandlinefan 9y ago
When I searched "google", this story didn't even show up in the first page of "popular". I had to sort by date to even find it.
- throwaway1584 9y ago
  At this point I expect actions like this from people holding the prevailing viewpoints in Silicon Valley whenever someone with a different viewpoint dare speak.
  - sol_remmy 9y ago
    Do you know of an uncensored forum that is better for discussing these issues? Is Slashdot better?
    - throwaway1584 9y ago
      Unfortunately no. However, I do not personally use reddit etc. I think we need to do everything we can to highlight injustices in the power applied to force only one viewpoint to be heard. In addition to this social justice warriors need to receive negative social and life repercussions for their tyrannical actions.
      - 13years 9y ago
        > In addition to this social justice warriors need to receive negative social and life repercussions for their tyrannical actions. You realize this is exactly a description of 'social justice' and it is exactly this that is the problem
        throwaway1584 9y ago
        We as a society agree to state sanctioned consequences that are similar to actions unacceptable to individuals. The difference is that there need to be a sense of justice and recourse, which social justice warriors don’t think should apply to their actions. Acting like a social justice warrior in the workplace should for instance be a firable offence, and things like doxxing should receive severe punishment.
        to3m 9y ago
        This is now officially beyond parody.
        throwaway1584 9y ago
        Why? Social justice actions that should be firable offenses that have been brought to light are; - blacklists of workers that have the wrong viewpoint - explicit race and gender discrimination - using power to enforce that no one can express an opposing viewpoint All actions that hurt those that are affected in material way.
        dragonwriter 9y ago
        Accusations in a lawsuit, even when they happen to support your preconceived biases, aren't the same thing as proof. Yes, the complaining parties in various lawsuits have levelled accusations of that (or, on the last case, substantially narrower accusations of which that description appears to be a somewhat hyperbolic generalization.) But anyone who can afford a court filing fee can put any accusation they want in a lawsuit.
    - hncensorship 9y ago
      Voat is the least censored forum I know of, but has the unfortunate problems of the communities it's become famous for. That being said, perhaps that should start being a point in its favor from how much aggressively the "HN immune response" seems to be shutting down any attempts to call out the blatant whitewashing here. After watching how aggressively my comments were marked dead, I turned on "Showdead" and came to the realization that the dead comments were far often more substantial than those allowed to persist; at the very least it may be worth others doing the same if they want to keep trying to utilize this platform.
    - throwaway1584 9y ago
      If you believe in reason I suggest reading the Quilette [1] and if you have an academic background you can join the Heterodox Academy [2]. [1] http://quillette.com http://quillette.com [2] https://heterodoxacademy.org https://heterodoxacademy.org
    - PKop 9y ago
      Gab.ai at the moment is the least censored social network to discuss this issue.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  https://news.google.com/news/search/section/q/google/google?hl=en&gl=US&ned=us https://news.google.com/news/search/section/q/google/google?... First story, at least in my feed. It has made most of the news sites, since the story keeps getting flagged off the front page, expect more submissions of the same topic because people aren't aware of existing discussions. Marking a submission as a dupe of a previous post that was flagged away is just wrong.
  - commandlinefan 9y ago
    I meant searching hacker news: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=google&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=google&sort=byPopularity&prefi...
13years 9y ago
Issues that can't be discussed can't be solved, they only grow larger. I once would have thought that this would have been somewhat obvious.
- hncensorship 9y ago
  I used to think HN was one of the better forums, but after recently trying to post a rebuttal to this [0] with multiple experiences from my workplace, and seeing my response vanish moments later, alongside the speed to which these threads have been flagged out of visibility (whilst anecdotal stories concerning women still rank very highly despite having far less age and far higher votes), I've lost faith both in the moderating abilities and the community to self-regulate. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16502359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16502359
  - forgottenpass 9y ago
    I vouched that one (and this) for ya, buddy. I don't think either were particularly strong positions or poorly spoken. It probably doesn't help that the automated rulesets here aren't kind to downvoted first posts by new users.
    - grzm 9y ago
      There are some anti-abuse features on HN which cause some new accounts to be banned when they're created. Such comments will be marked [dead], not [flagged][dead]. I suspect that's what's happened with both 'hncensorship and 'throwaway12395 (though I didn't see the status of the latter's comment before it was vouched). Some people get caught by this feature unintentionally: if they suspect this is the case, the mods have been very open about whitelisting such accounts. You can email them via the Contact link in the footer. Note that this is different from people being flagged or down voted by members because of content. I can imagine it's very frustrating, but they are different behaviors. In one, specific action has been taken by members; in another, one has been caught by automated anti-abuse measures.
- throwaway1584 9y ago
to3m 9y ago
Awesome, thanks - I just got bingo! I don't know if you're aware but articles can move off the front page because people (like me) flag them (as I did). If enough people flag it, off it goes. Sometimes the article sticks around, and obviously mine was a minority voice. Sometimes it disappears, probably because, I expect, most people are like me: we've seen this stuff discussed before, and the discussions are, on average, poison - or, worse, repetitive and dull. So, flag. Flag, flag, flag. (That's what I think to myself, anyway. Actually, I only get the option of flagging it the once.) I make no bones about this, and I won't apologize for my actions, because I have nothing to apologize for. I vote according to my principles and mine alone. If these principles happen to be shared by others, great. If not, that's fine too. Democracy in action. (Well... I do admit that I give the discussions a quick skim, just on the off-chance I might see tptacek in action. My guilty pleasure! There's also the chance that somebody might actually, you know, make a good point, but I don't worry too much about that because my experience is that the risk is very low...)
- throwaway1584 9y ago
  So what you are saying is that you are the kind of person that would have send people to the Gulag for having a different viewpoint. Good job. I am sure this feels pleasant as long as your viewpoint is in power. Tyrannies rarely stay that way though, so good luck.
  - to3m 9y ago
    My understanding is that the flag button merely makes it more likely the discussion will vanish off the front page, and there is no punishment for the participants.
    - throwaway1584 9y ago
      Even if that is correct it does not make it a just way of fighting for your cause. Voting for articles on the front-page of HN is equivalent to a vote in a democracy. If you removed the opposing party candidate from the ballot you might reach your short-term goal, but at the cost of a functioning democracy. In this case the article was marked as a dupe, but this specific article was not posted twice and previous articles on the subject was quickly voted off the frontpage by people like you despite high interest. This didn't happen to articles critical of Damore, so this seems to be exclusively a social justice tactic. Edit: explained better why talking about voting is relevant as an analogy
root_axis 9y ago
> I think this is emblematic of how tyrannical some of the people subscribing to the prevailing Silicon Valley viewpoint are. Why invoke the "tyrannical" rhetoric in respect to clicking a "flag" link on a website? It's not that big of a deal. Not everything is an attack by the Silicon Valley elite, all sorts of interesting topics get booted off the front page and there is always someone with a particularly strong opinion in the comments who has to exclaim why their personal issue is the bane of the HN hivemind (a hivemind that underpins a decentralized conspiracy to destroy free speech in order to avoid confronting the unavoidable conclusions of your air-tight argument). Sometimes stuff just gets flagged, it happens on both sides of every controversial topic ranging from blockchains to booth babes.
- throwaway1584 9y ago
  HN policy states that topics should be relevant to tech and startups. This topic in particular clearly is and also garnered a lot of interest. Arguably a majority might actually be interested in discussing this topic as they might be perceived as a majority and be potential targets of this kind of discrimination. When an ideologically possessed social justice minority then in violation of HN policy and the interest of the audience remove it from the frontpage that is problematic. It is also disingenuous to say this happens to articles on the prevailing viewpoint to the same degree. Articles on Damore and Fowler was plentiful, and they were not voted off the frontpage. The sin of oppressing critical viewpoints in the valley falls squarely on the social justice warriors.
  - root_axis 9y ago
    You sound exactly like the "ideologically possessed social justice minority" you're castigating. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14946450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14946450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14868884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14868884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14682604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14682604
    - throwaway1584 9y ago
dragonwriter 9y ago
> Personally I wanted to discuss the article yesterday, but it was moved off the front-page too fast despite high interest. You can discuss things that aren't on the front page. You aren't entitled to have what you want to discuss features on the front page, OTOH.
- hokkos 9y ago
  The frontpage of HN is quite useless, I go directly to /active it shows the most discussed thread, a better metric than upvote in my opinion.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    I didn't know that existed, /active sounds very useful!
hsod 9y ago
You think the prevailing viewpoint around here is pro-diversity efforts? I must be reading a different HN.

commandlinefan 9y ago

When I searched "google", this story didn't even show up in the first page of "popular". I had to sort by date to even find it.

throwaway1584 9y ago
At this point I expect actions like this from people holding the prevailing viewpoints in Silicon Valley whenever someone with a different viewpoint dare speak.
- sol_remmy 9y ago
  Do you know of an uncensored forum that is better for discussing these issues? Is Slashdot better?
  - throwaway1584 9y ago
    Unfortunately no. However, I do not personally use reddit etc. I think we need to do everything we can to highlight injustices in the power applied to force only one viewpoint to be heard. In addition to this social justice warriors need to receive negative social and life repercussions for their tyrannical actions.
    - 13years 9y ago
      > In addition to this social justice warriors need to receive negative social and life repercussions for their tyrannical actions. You realize this is exactly a description of 'social justice' and it is exactly this that is the problem
      - throwaway1584 9y ago
        We as a society agree to state sanctioned consequences that are similar to actions unacceptable to individuals. The difference is that there need to be a sense of justice and recourse, which social justice warriors don’t think should apply to their actions. Acting like a social justice warrior in the workplace should for instance be a firable offence, and things like doxxing should receive severe punishment.
        to3m 9y ago
        This is now officially beyond parody.
        throwaway1584 9y ago
        Why? Social justice actions that should be firable offenses that have been brought to light are; - blacklists of workers that have the wrong viewpoint - explicit race and gender discrimination - using power to enforce that no one can express an opposing viewpoint All actions that hurt those that are affected in material way.
        dragonwriter 9y ago
        Accusations in a lawsuit, even when they happen to support your preconceived biases, aren't the same thing as proof. Yes, the complaining parties in various lawsuits have levelled accusations of that (or, on the last case, substantially narrower accusations of which that description appears to be a somewhat hyperbolic generalization.) But anyone who can afford a court filing fee can put any accusation they want in a lawsuit.
  - hncensorship 9y ago
    Voat is the least censored forum I know of, but has the unfortunate problems of the communities it's become famous for. That being said, perhaps that should start being a point in its favor from how much aggressively the "HN immune response" seems to be shutting down any attempts to call out the blatant whitewashing here. After watching how aggressively my comments were marked dead, I turned on "Showdead" and came to the realization that the dead comments were far often more substantial than those allowed to persist; at the very least it may be worth others doing the same if they want to keep trying to utilize this platform.
  - throwaway1584 9y ago
    If you believe in reason I suggest reading the Quilette [1] and if you have an academic background you can join the Heterodox Academy [2]. [1] http://quillette.com http://quillette.com [2] https://heterodoxacademy.org https://heterodoxacademy.org
  - PKop 9y ago
    Gab.ai at the moment is the least censored social network to discuss this issue.
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
https://news.google.com/news/search/section/q/google/google?hl=en&gl=US&ned=us https://news.google.com/news/search/section/q/google/google?... First story, at least in my feed. It has made most of the news sites, since the story keeps getting flagged off the front page, expect more submissions of the same topic because people aren't aware of existing discussions. Marking a submission as a dupe of a previous post that was flagged away is just wrong.
- commandlinefan 9y ago
  I meant searching hacker news: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=google&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=google&sort=byPopularity&prefi...

13years 9y ago

Issues that can't be discussed can't be solved, they only grow larger. I once would have thought that this would have been somewhat obvious.

hncensorship 9y ago
I used to think HN was one of the better forums, but after recently trying to post a rebuttal to this [0] with multiple experiences from my workplace, and seeing my response vanish moments later, alongside the speed to which these threads have been flagged out of visibility (whilst anecdotal stories concerning women still rank very highly despite having far less age and far higher votes), I've lost faith both in the moderating abilities and the community to self-regulate. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16502359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16502359
- forgottenpass 9y ago
  I vouched that one (and this) for ya, buddy. I don't think either were particularly strong positions or poorly spoken. It probably doesn't help that the automated rulesets here aren't kind to downvoted first posts by new users.
  - grzm 9y ago
    There are some anti-abuse features on HN which cause some new accounts to be banned when they're created. Such comments will be marked [dead], not [flagged][dead]. I suspect that's what's happened with both 'hncensorship and 'throwaway12395 (though I didn't see the status of the latter's comment before it was vouched). Some people get caught by this feature unintentionally: if they suspect this is the case, the mods have been very open about whitelisting such accounts. You can email them via the Contact link in the footer. Note that this is different from people being flagged or down voted by members because of content. I can imagine it's very frustrating, but they are different behaviors. In one, specific action has been taken by members; in another, one has been caught by automated anti-abuse measures.
throwaway1584 9y ago

to3m 9y ago

Awesome, thanks - I just got bingo! I don't know if you're aware but articles can move off the front page because people (like me) flag them (as I did). If enough people flag it, off it goes. Sometimes the article sticks around, and obviously mine was a minority voice. Sometimes it disappears, probably because, I expect, most people are like me: we've seen this stuff discussed before, and the discussions are, on average, poison - or, worse, repetitive and dull. So, flag. Flag, flag, flag. (That's what I think to myself, anyway. Actually, I only get the option of flagging it the once.) I make no bones about this, and I won't apologize for my actions, because I have nothing to apologize for. I vote according to my principles and mine alone. If these principles happen to be shared by others, great. If not, that's fine too. Democracy in action. (Well... I do admit that I give the discussions a quick skim, just on the off-chance I might see tptacek in action. My guilty pleasure! There's also the chance that somebody might actually, you know, make a good point, but I don't worry too much about that because my experience is that the risk is very low...)

throwaway1584 9y ago
So what you are saying is that you are the kind of person that would have send people to the Gulag for having a different viewpoint. Good job. I am sure this feels pleasant as long as your viewpoint is in power. Tyrannies rarely stay that way though, so good luck.
- to3m 9y ago
  My understanding is that the flag button merely makes it more likely the discussion will vanish off the front page, and there is no punishment for the participants.
  - throwaway1584 9y ago
    Even if that is correct it does not make it a just way of fighting for your cause. Voting for articles on the front-page of HN is equivalent to a vote in a democracy. If you removed the opposing party candidate from the ballot you might reach your short-term goal, but at the cost of a functioning democracy. In this case the article was marked as a dupe, but this specific article was not posted twice and previous articles on the subject was quickly voted off the frontpage by people like you despite high interest. This didn't happen to articles critical of Damore, so this seems to be exclusively a social justice tactic. Edit: explained better why talking about voting is relevant as an analogy

root_axis 9y ago

> I think this is emblematic of how tyrannical some of the people subscribing to the prevailing Silicon Valley viewpoint are. Why invoke the "tyrannical" rhetoric in respect to clicking a "flag" link on a website? It's not that big of a deal. Not everything is an attack by the Silicon Valley elite, all sorts of interesting topics get booted off the front page and there is always someone with a particularly strong opinion in the comments who has to exclaim why their personal issue is the bane of the HN hivemind (a hivemind that underpins a decentralized conspiracy to destroy free speech in order to avoid confronting the unavoidable conclusions of your air-tight argument). Sometimes stuff just gets flagged, it happens on both sides of every controversial topic ranging from blockchains to booth babes.

throwaway1584 9y ago
HN policy states that topics should be relevant to tech and startups. This topic in particular clearly is and also garnered a lot of interest. Arguably a majority might actually be interested in discussing this topic as they might be perceived as a majority and be potential targets of this kind of discrimination. When an ideologically possessed social justice minority then in violation of HN policy and the interest of the audience remove it from the frontpage that is problematic. It is also disingenuous to say this happens to articles on the prevailing viewpoint to the same degree. Articles on Damore and Fowler was plentiful, and they were not voted off the frontpage. The sin of oppressing critical viewpoints in the valley falls squarely on the social justice warriors.
- root_axis 9y ago
  You sound exactly like the "ideologically possessed social justice minority" you're castigating. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14946450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14946450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14868884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14868884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14682604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14682604
  - throwaway1584 9y ago

dragonwriter 9y ago

> Personally I wanted to discuss the article yesterday, but it was moved off the front-page too fast despite high interest. You can discuss things that aren't on the front page. You aren't entitled to have what you want to discuss features on the front page, OTOH.

hokkos 9y ago
The frontpage of HN is quite useless, I go directly to /active it shows the most discussed thread, a better metric than upvote in my opinion.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  I didn't know that existed, /active sounds very useful!

hsod 9y ago

You think the prevailing viewpoint around here is pro-diversity efforts? I must be reading a different HN.