9 ms·

So HN changed the headline to remove TikTok which is a name I reconized and replaced it with "ByteDance" and "Musical.ly", which I've never heard of before. It

by nullc 7y ago

So HN changed the headline to remove TikTok which is a name I reconized and replaced it with "ByteDance" and "Musical.ly", which I've never heard of before. It was originally displayed on HN the same as it is in the article. From the article, I know that the new headline is more precise. But it's much less informative, I wouldn't have clicked the article under this name.

radcon 7y ago
They also edited a headline for a #1 ranked story about Blizzard and the Hong Kong issue, removing Hong Kong from the headline entirely. HN sort of reminds me of China -- a dictatorship with zero transparency and a penchant for manipulation. Edit: Can't forget the spineless bootlickers who are hopelessly devoted to the state! You know you've struck a nerve when the best 'reply' they can offer is a silent downvote.
- GetOutOfBed 7y ago
  With China you know who is in charge. With Hackernews it is a bit more opaque.
  - dang 7y ago
    I'm in charge of Hacker News. What would you like to know?
- Karunamon 7y ago
  That's assuming an awful lot of unncessary bad faith. While the title guidelines are enforced here in an incredibly nonintuitive, nonobjective, nonconsistent way, that's no reason to imply malfeasance.
  - dang 7y ago
    Thanks for the defense, but I feel a need to pipe up for HN moderators also. It's not true that the title guideline is enforced as you say. If it were, the threads would be full of complaints about titles, when in fact such complaints are an order of magnitude less common than they were, say, 5 years ago. This subthread is an exception, and you'll notice that we've attempted to accommodate the complaints by editing the title again. We have spent years calibrating how we handle titles and it's one of the most consistent things we do. I know it can be nonintuitive to casual readers at times, but that's because applying that guideline is surprisingly complicated in practice. If it were your job, you'd soon find that as well. Also, people only notice the cases that stand out, which tend to be the edits they dislike and feel we got wrong (which maybe we did). That's a sample bias. Probably less than 5% of title edits even get noticed. Maybe even less than 1%. We're always happy to answer questions about it, as well as to change titles in response to user feedback, which we do regularly: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20ok%20above&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
    - Karunamon 7y ago
      Well.. It's nonobjective in that the title guidelines carry subjective judgements. Its' nonconsistent because of the previous problem. It's unintuitive for the reasons you described above. I think the reason it sticks in my craw so much is what I'll call the "rake to the face" phenomenon. Much like stepping on a rake in a dark shed and getting whacked in the face, it's usually surprising, usually unexpected, and usually painful (though mentally rather than physically.. "where did that article I read earlier go? No way it got flagged off.. Oh, there it is, they messed with the freaking title again. That was a waste of 5 minutes.") This is worse when a descriptive title that actually calls out why someone should be interested in the article is reverted to something generic, which IMO, actively makes the site worse in furtherance of The Rules, which is never a good thing. ---- That aside.. If I could float a feature request that doesn't require any rule changes? Put a [*] or some other signifier next to titles that have been modified, and have it grey out over time (kinda like how comments get lighter and lighter as their score falls) and eventually disappear. Per your own search example, title changes are rare enough that there likely wouldn't be many on the front page, and it would give people like me who lose track of renamed articles a place or two to look.
- abduhl 7y ago
  The phrase spineless bootlicker is such an internet citizen phrase. Outrage culture signaling with respect to language is always so fascinating.
  - marcos123 7y ago
    Any thoughts on the actual topic, or did your attention span prevent that?
    - dang 7y ago
      We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dinkleberg 7y ago
  Why do you hang out on a site that you would compare to a dictatorial China? It seems like a poor use of time.
- dang 7y ago
  What headline was that? Obviously we're not removing Hong Kong from Blizzard titles because of some sinister agenda. If we were, we suck at it: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=blizzard%20hong%20kong&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... I hope HN readers have gotten smart enough to notice how when commenters make grandiose claims like this about manipulation, they never provide links. That's because the facts never support the grandiose claim. Curious to see what the real reason might have been, I skimmed through the last 30 or so titles with Blizzard in them and didn't find one we'd edited in this way, or even at all. Perhaps I missed it. But whatever we did with any such title, it would have been because of the site guideline: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."
ng12 7y ago
I really wish HN wouldn't do this except for materially incorrect titles. I find myself trying to figure out if a link/discussion is the same one I've already read after the title has been editorialized.
- homonculus1 7y ago
  Even a "link changed" or a cross symbol or any kind of indicator would be nice!
wnevets 7y ago
Wouldn't a more accurate and informative title include "TikTok's owner Beijing ByteDance"
- dang 7y ago
  I tried, but couldn't figure out how to fit that, or even just "TikTok owner", into the 80 char limit without making the title less informative overall.
  - wnevets 7y ago
    fair enough, I didn't think about the character limit
throwaway2048 7y ago
This is a completely ridiculous title change, doesn't match the article title, and totally obfuscates the relevance of the article.
- dang 7y ago
  It's routine HN moderation. The site guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ask for the original title to be used except when it's misleading or linkbait. When a title is either of those things, we change it. We do that routinely. The issue is following the site guidelines. There's zero intention to obfuscate. In this case, the article title is in my judgment misleading—not hugely so, but enough to be worth changing. We changed it to language from the first paragraph, which is where articles typically say what they're really about. If that's obfuscating, then the article obfuscates itself.
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    Intent to obfuscate was not implied in my statement, apologies if it came across like that.
rshnotsecure 7y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com is run by M5 Hosting out of San Diego. M5 Hosting is also known as M5 Computer Security out of San Diego. These firms are a strange choice for a place like YCombinator to host I think.
- tboyd47 7y ago
  Hey man, I really like the research you're doing on HN. Thought about starting a blog?
- detaro 7y ago
  Why are they a strange choice?
- dang 7y ago
  That insinuation is so obscure that I can't even guess what you're insinuating. It's a small hosting company with good support. It's a nice fit with the spirit of this community. I have no idea what alternate names they have.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - rshnotsecure 7y ago
    There copyright page hasn’t been updated since 2003...
    - dang 7y ago
      Like I said, it's a nice fit with the spirit of this community.
    - mikiem 7y ago
      Founder/CEO of M5 Hosting here. M5 Computer Security pivoted to M5 Hosting in the early 2000s. We do host the servers that this site is on. I have been through YC Startup School recently. We host a few Fortune 500s and many startups. Can I answer any questions you have about us?
claudeganon 7y ago
I wonder if anyone ever built an HN title change tracker. Seems a trivial project for the audience of this site.
- tastroder 7y ago
  https://hackernewstitles.netlify.com/ https://hackernewstitles.netlify.com/
  - dang 7y ago
    That's a cool site! But some of those are edits made by submitters, not moderators.
    - tastroder 7y ago
      Just found it through the search, it was submitted a few months back. > But some of those are edits made by submitters, [...] Honestly never realized that's a thing, thanks for the tip!
marcos123 7y ago
Are you trying to get shadowbanned by the ycombinator Ministry of Truth?
dang 7y ago
We changed the title because the actual story, as stated in the first paragraph, is distant enough from the article title as to make that title misleading. "U.S. opens national security investigation into TikTok" connotes something very different from reviewing a specific acquisition. Actually Reuters is usually a lot more careful than that. As for whether the headline says TikTok or ByteDance, the only thing I care about is what readers will complain about least. If we make it say ByteDance, that's correct, but people will accuse us of trying to bury the lede because no one has heard of ByteDance. (Why on earth would we do that? Obvious answer: we must be controlled by the Chinese state, or some other sinister interest. How people come up with this stuff...) The problem is that if it says TikTok, people will complain about the title being incorrect. I've flipped it the other way for now; let's see what's worse.
- nullc 7y ago
  Maybe "U.S. to review National Security of ByteDance (TikTok) acquiring Musical.ly."? I don't envy your work. :) FWIW, I didn't suspect any foul play... the ByteDance is more accurate but also totally opaque.
  - dang 7y ago
    I think the language is too awkward there, and the meaning not super clear either. But of course it's all a matter of interpretation.

by nullc 7y ago

radcon 7y ago

They also edited a headline for a #1 ranked story about Blizzard and the Hong Kong issue, removing Hong Kong from the headline entirely. HN sort of reminds me of China -- a dictatorship with zero transparency and a penchant for manipulation. Edit: Can't forget the spineless bootlickers who are hopelessly devoted to the state! You know you've struck a nerve when the best 'reply' they can offer is a silent downvote.

GetOutOfBed 7y ago
With China you know who is in charge. With Hackernews it is a bit more opaque.
- dang 7y ago
  I'm in charge of Hacker News. What would you like to know?
Karunamon 7y ago
That's assuming an awful lot of unncessary bad faith. While the title guidelines are enforced here in an incredibly nonintuitive, nonobjective, nonconsistent way, that's no reason to imply malfeasance.
- dang 7y ago
  Thanks for the defense, but I feel a need to pipe up for HN moderators also. It's not true that the title guideline is enforced as you say. If it were, the threads would be full of complaints about titles, when in fact such complaints are an order of magnitude less common than they were, say, 5 years ago. This subthread is an exception, and you'll notice that we've attempted to accommodate the complaints by editing the title again. We have spent years calibrating how we handle titles and it's one of the most consistent things we do. I know it can be nonintuitive to casual readers at times, but that's because applying that guideline is surprisingly complicated in practice. If it were your job, you'd soon find that as well. Also, people only notice the cases that stand out, which tend to be the edits they dislike and feel we got wrong (which maybe we did). That's a sample bias. Probably less than 5% of title edits even get noticed. Maybe even less than 1%. We're always happy to answer questions about it, as well as to change titles in response to user feedback, which we do regularly: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20ok%20above&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
  - Karunamon 7y ago
    Well.. It's nonobjective in that the title guidelines carry subjective judgements. Its' nonconsistent because of the previous problem. It's unintuitive for the reasons you described above. I think the reason it sticks in my craw so much is what I'll call the "rake to the face" phenomenon. Much like stepping on a rake in a dark shed and getting whacked in the face, it's usually surprising, usually unexpected, and usually painful (though mentally rather than physically.. "where did that article I read earlier go? No way it got flagged off.. Oh, there it is, they messed with the freaking title again. That was a waste of 5 minutes.") This is worse when a descriptive title that actually calls out why someone should be interested in the article is reverted to something generic, which IMO, actively makes the site worse in furtherance of The Rules, which is never a good thing. ---- That aside.. If I could float a feature request that doesn't require any rule changes? Put a [*] or some other signifier next to titles that have been modified, and have it grey out over time (kinda like how comments get lighter and lighter as their score falls) and eventually disappear. Per your own search example, title changes are rare enough that there likely wouldn't be many on the front page, and it would give people like me who lose track of renamed articles a place or two to look.
abduhl 7y ago
The phrase spineless bootlicker is such an internet citizen phrase. Outrage culture signaling with respect to language is always so fascinating.
- marcos123 7y ago
  Any thoughts on the actual topic, or did your attention span prevent that?
  - dang 7y ago
    We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dinkleberg 7y ago
Why do you hang out on a site that you would compare to a dictatorial China? It seems like a poor use of time.
dang 7y ago
What headline was that? Obviously we're not removing Hong Kong from Blizzard titles because of some sinister agenda. If we were, we suck at it: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=blizzard%20hong%20kong&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... I hope HN readers have gotten smart enough to notice how when commenters make grandiose claims like this about manipulation, they never provide links. That's because the facts never support the grandiose claim. Curious to see what the real reason might have been, I skimmed through the last 30 or so titles with Blizzard in them and didn't find one we'd edited in this way, or even at all. Perhaps I missed it. But whatever we did with any such title, it would have been because of the site guideline: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."

ng12 7y ago

I really wish HN wouldn't do this except for materially incorrect titles. I find myself trying to figure out if a link/discussion is the same one I've already read after the title has been editorialized.

homonculus1 7y ago
Even a "link changed" or a cross symbol or any kind of indicator would be nice!

wnevets 7y ago

Wouldn't a more accurate and informative title include "TikTok's owner Beijing ByteDance"

dang 7y ago
I tried, but couldn't figure out how to fit that, or even just "TikTok owner", into the 80 char limit without making the title less informative overall.
- wnevets 7y ago
  fair enough, I didn't think about the character limit

throwaway2048 7y ago

This is a completely ridiculous title change, doesn't match the article title, and totally obfuscates the relevance of the article.

dang 7y ago
It's routine HN moderation. The site guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ask for the original title to be used except when it's misleading or linkbait. When a title is either of those things, we change it. We do that routinely. The issue is following the site guidelines. There's zero intention to obfuscate. In this case, the article title is in my judgment misleading—not hugely so, but enough to be worth changing. We changed it to language from the first paragraph, which is where articles typically say what they're really about. If that's obfuscating, then the article obfuscates itself.
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  Intent to obfuscate was not implied in my statement, apologies if it came across like that.

rshnotsecure 7y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com is run by M5 Hosting out of San Diego. M5 Hosting is also known as M5 Computer Security out of San Diego. These firms are a strange choice for a place like YCombinator to host I think.

tboyd47 7y ago
Hey man, I really like the research you're doing on HN. Thought about starting a blog?
detaro 7y ago
Why are they a strange choice?
dang 7y ago
That insinuation is so obscure that I can't even guess what you're insinuating. It's a small hosting company with good support. It's a nice fit with the spirit of this community. I have no idea what alternate names they have.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- rshnotsecure 7y ago
  There copyright page hasn’t been updated since 2003...
  - dang 7y ago
    Like I said, it's a nice fit with the spirit of this community.
  - mikiem 7y ago
    Founder/CEO of M5 Hosting here. M5 Computer Security pivoted to M5 Hosting in the early 2000s. We do host the servers that this site is on. I have been through YC Startup School recently. We host a few Fortune 500s and many startups. Can I answer any questions you have about us?

claudeganon 7y ago

I wonder if anyone ever built an HN title change tracker. Seems a trivial project for the audience of this site.

tastroder 7y ago
https://hackernewstitles.netlify.com/ https://hackernewstitles.netlify.com/
- dang 7y ago
  That's a cool site! But some of those are edits made by submitters, not moderators.
  - tastroder 7y ago
    Just found it through the search, it was submitted a few months back. > But some of those are edits made by submitters, [...] Honestly never realized that's a thing, thanks for the tip!

marcos123 7y ago

Are you trying to get shadowbanned by the ycombinator Ministry of Truth?

dang 7y ago

We changed the title because the actual story, as stated in the first paragraph, is distant enough from the article title as to make that title misleading. "U.S. opens national security investigation into TikTok" connotes something very different from reviewing a specific acquisition. Actually Reuters is usually a lot more careful than that. As for whether the headline says TikTok or ByteDance, the only thing I care about is what readers will complain about least. If we make it say ByteDance, that's correct, but people will accuse us of trying to bury the lede because no one has heard of ByteDance. (Why on earth would we do that? Obvious answer: we must be controlled by the Chinese state, or some other sinister interest. How people come up with this stuff...) The problem is that if it says TikTok, people will complain about the title being incorrect. I've flipped it the other way for now; let's see what's worse.

nullc 7y ago
Maybe "U.S. to review National Security of ByteDance (TikTok) acquiring Musical.ly."? I don't envy your work. :) FWIW, I didn't suspect any foul play... the ByteDance is more accurate but also totally opaque.
- dang 7y ago
  I think the language is too awkward there, and the meaning not super clear either. But of course it's all a matter of interpretation.