8 ms·
I can fully believe that. Try for instance to have a discussion here on hacker news about the less fortunate sides of diversity initiatives. Then see how many
by josteink 8y ago
I can fully believe that. Try for instance to have a discussion here on hacker news about the less fortunate sides of diversity initiatives.
Then see how many minutes it takes before your entire thread is flagged and effectively censored.
- pavlov 8y agoHN is not owned by a social media giant, so this grievance doesn’t appear to have much to do with the article.
- chillydawg 8y agoSure it is, it's owned by the people who own (or initially funded) the social media giants.
- ProAm 8y agoIt is owned by a Silicon Valley VC giant, while not directly media it is steered by big money. However I think HN is moderated relatively well, but I can see how some people might think it's being gamed/controlled/censored by self interest (I don't)
- bumblebritches5 8y agoReddit is and it's even worse.
- mc32 8y agoI think that’s the wrong question to imply. What it is is an illustration of how big media behaves due to its own implicit ad well as explicit biases. Of course HN isn’t mainstream, but it also experiences some of the same symptoms.
- cafard 8y agoHN is a social media giant?
- josteink 8y agoIt’s social media if nothing else. Doesn’t have to be a giant to exhibit the behaviors people find objectionable, like applying selective censorship.
- crazygringo 8y agoI am actually surprised by what appears to be HN's explicit censorship of this topic. Just two days ago this NYT editorial [1] was on the front page of HN with 20+ upvotes IIRC, and before there were more than 1 or 2 comments the post was deleted and unviewable. (And didn't show up as flagged either -- just totally deleted.) I'm not sure how many people on HN are aware of what appears to be admin censorship of this topic. And it's not like it's some incendiary blog post -- it's an Op-Ed from the nation's traditional "newspaper of record", part of the national conversation, and relevant to our industry. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/opinion/harvard-asian-american-racism.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/opinion/harvard-asian-ame...
- pvg 8y agoThe post is there, just flagged. Had plenty of (mostly terrible) discussion.
- sctb 8y agoI believe you're mistaken. Do you know that item ids are just incrementing integers? We're making it bloody hard on ourselves to get away with censorship that way. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17403488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17403488 Other recent threads on the subject: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16759138 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16759138 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16250371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16250371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17327774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17327774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17320360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17320360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17334733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17334733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17325778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17325778
- friedman23 8y agoI don't believe that it is hacker news admins that are doing the censorship. There is a flag feature and any post that is flagged is automatically hidden. There is a dedicated contingent of users that will flag anything that goes against their narrative. This happens for articles that discuss China, diversity, etc.
- nascar_is_bad 8y agoThat's about what I would expect. It's about the same as discussing the less fortunate side of vaccines, which I would hope is buried as quickly as possible for obvious reasons.
- robotrout 8y agoWhy? People on HN skew towards being young enough to be having babies. Why wouldn't you want them to know that it's OK to space out vaccines instead of conforming to the schedule that is pushed on them?
- ceejayoz 8y ago> Why wouldn't you want them to know that it's OK to space out vaccines... Because it's not. Spacing them out means they're getting some later, leaving them vulnerable longer. It also lends false credence to the idea that they're dangerous. In many cases, it may also mean kids miss out on the later doses, because repeated doctor visits to administer them may be unaffordable (copays) or difficult (scheduling, transportation, etc.). Multiple visits for shots also exposes them to germy pediatrician waiting rooms more frequently.
- robotrout 8y agoI do not agree with anything that you said. However, it is an argument and a basis for a discussion. You state that such a discussion should not occur, and that those new parents should not have access to those (including our pediatrician, by the way) who state that the current schedule is much too aggressive and can safely be spaced out. Denying new parents the opportunity for such a discussion is pure and simple arrogance and it does nobody any good except the egos of those who engage in that censorship. --------------------- Whackadoodles. Nice. The arrogance is strong in this one. Your own linked article (about not a study, but merely a survey whose demographics and actual questions are hidden from us) states that parents concerns should not be dismissed. This is a discussion about censorship, and you've shown yourself only too willing to engage in it.
- camelCaseOfBeer 8y agoLol. I think that has a little more to do with the topic riling up the angsty trolls who tend to turn otherwise normal conversations into internet dumpster-fires. Not to mention it's easier to blame some boogyman for ideas that challenge your own, rather than taking accountability for an unrealistic or dissonant worldview.
- oconnor663 8y agoFB/Twitter and HN aren't really comparable here. HN does topic moderation; FB and Twitter do not. There's a lot of room for subtlety here -- you could argue that topic moderation is done in a biased way that ends up behaving like censorship, for example -- but the discussion definitely won't go anywhere if it doesn't make a good faith effort to avoid equating those two things.
- wybiral 8y agoBut isn't this more that your peers are quick to react to that topic rather than the platform is censoring it?
- threatofrain 8y agoI thought there's some pretty robust discussion about people who feel shafted by diversity initiatives. I do feel that anyone who speaks in a hot-headed way gets penalized on Hacker News, and I think that's great. There were a few big recent HN discussions on the matter -- are there clear instances of what you mean on the whole?
- TaylorAlexander 8y agoIt seems to me that there’s some middle area where the person doesn’t understand Bay Area culture but they’re not being rude or hot headed, and yet their genuine questions get downvoted. I do think there’s some kind of “you can’t discuss that” attitudes on here about certain topics. Diversity stuff is an area I can imagine reasonable and even good comments getting downvoted. Sadly I don’t have any sources, but this is my intuition after reading HN regularly.
- pvg 8y agoDownvotes aren't 'censorship'.
- JackCh 8y agoIn and of themselves, no. However, I think an argument could be made for the visual suppression of posts, which occurs after too many downvotes have been given, being a form of soft censorship. The information is still broadcast but it's made impossible to read unless I copy/paste it or tilt my screen to an extreme angle.
- TaylorAlexander 8y agoI’ve observed a similar phenomena on articles about the wrongdoings of the US government. Well cited high quality articles about historical or contemporary US aggression overseas disappear quickly even when they had been getting upvotes. I noticed a similar trend on Facebook. My posts about the tragedy occurring right now in Yemen got almost no traffic on Facebook, despite being worded and cited similarly to my other popular posts.
- Andrex 8y agoIsn't it possible that what's happening in Yemen, just but its nature, is a turn-off for most of FB's user base?
- TaylorAlexander 8y agoYes and that’s the rub. Previously a journalist decided what stories people should hear. Now an algorithm tuned to people’s engagement levels decides what we should see. It may have the effect of burying important stories that make people uncomfortable, which a journalist might not do. Just because people would rather not know about Yemen doesn’t mean we’re better off if people don’t know about Yemen.
- kebman 8y agoPreviously people just turned off stuff like that, or went lalalalalalalalalal!
- scythe 8y agoHN and other "distributed moderation" sites tend to quell any discussion that a fraction of the userbase strongly dislikes. Most people don't vote on most comments, so highly motivated people have more say on a particular topic. In some cases, this is a correction mechanism, such as when people with physics education downvote the proponents of fringe theories; in other cases, it may hide useful information, such as in a debate about morality or a similar less certain topic that people acquire strong opinions about without having such high confidence. However, I find it hard to justify calling this "censorship" because it is the site working as intended. Controversial topics are avoided because the goal of the site is ultimately recreational. There are many things you can't discuss on HN because the userbase just isn't interested, but nobody would argue that HN censors discussions of, say, the hardcore music scene in the Bay Area.
- ryanmarsh 8y agoSurprised this thread hasn’t been flagged yet.
- matt4077 8y agoI’m not sure which bias you specifically mean. But in case it’s a pro-diversity sentiment you believe to be seeing, let me assure you: HN is the only social circle where I can /still/ find people insisting “affirmative action is racism”.
- sheepmullet 8y agoPerhaps your social circles lack diversity of thought? Partly due the to recent news on Harvard admissions, most of my Asian friends think affirmative action is racist against them.
- soundwave106 8y agoThere's two angles to this: general crowd psychology, and how social media tailors the news feed in response to it. In the old Internet (forums and Usenet), sure, there was crowd psychology too. There always is. However, these social media designs were far less prone to hiding unpopular opinions. As a general rule, unless you had an overtly strict moderator or something, you could read posts with unpopular opinions, even if the "crowd" disagreed. Big social media sites (Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/etc.) in contrast use algorithmic reordering, shuffling, and tweaking of your feeds / timelines / etc. Likes / retweets / etc. are one component to what gets displayed on your feed. The net result here is that unpopular opinions are often effectively "silenced". IMHO this leads to a negative and polarizing effect. I can't call it 100% censorship though. It's different. On most social networks, you are free to, say, start your own little space (a subreddit or your own Twitter space and whatnot) where, say, the less fortunate sides of diversity initiatives are discussed. Unless the subject strays into TOS violation territory, you can probably say what you want. However, there's a good chance in said subreddit (in this polarized environment and considering crowd psychology) that it is the positive side of diversity initiatives that are downvoted to oblivion. And the reverse is true as well. Basically, crowd psychology and the binary like/retweet system ensures that no one hears what the "other side" has to say. Maybe it's a "dark pattern" of sort? Tweak the emotions of the user in the right way, not the wrong way, and they might spend a bit longer looking at that advertisement... Hacker News doesn't feel as "bad" to me as the bigger social networks for some reason -- I'm not a big fan of upvote/downvote systems, obviously, but at least HN includes tools like the showdead option that's pretty easy to enable. There was a large discussion about diversity initiatives during relevant stories (the James Damore memo for instance), but for others, I know that some of the "crowd" here is wary of overtly political articles period, favoring only pure tech articles. So you are going to get some front page selection bias against articles of a "political" nature.
- greglindahl 8y agoUsenet's classic problem was that it amplified the most extreme voices in any conversation. Extreme voices and unpopular opinions are different things. You can be extremely polite in expressing an unpopular opinion, and get upvoted on HN.