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Its the subject matter that seems to warrant intervention by a moderator. Speculation about a state actor in a high profile breach or outage or speculation of a

• dang 7y ago
  Such perceptions are in the eye of the beholder; whatever a reader feels most strongly about, that's what they'll notice the moderator moderating, or failing to moderate. It is an inverted image of your own feelings and beliefs. People who like/dislike other things have different images of moderator bias. I don't much care, either way, about Amazon or any other high-profile technology company. I care about doing a good job for HN. Assuming I didn't misread the GP comment, it seems like an obvious case of somebody making something inflammatory up on the internet, so I posted a moderation reply. This is routine. Yes, there are plenty of other cases just as bad where we don't reply. That doesn't mean we secretly agree with those comments. Most often it means we didn't see them.
  • Ill_ban_myself 7y ago
    Perhaps you could update the guidelines regarding your take on when it is acceptable to speculate and an appropriate way to do it. This did not seem to be a throwaway comment to me. It seems entirely plausible that a backroom deal was reached between local politicians and Amazon. Such deals were solicited and a major part of the reporting around this story.