5 ms·

You would be surprised how often flagging is abused on HN. Say something that puts certain companies (you know who you are) in really bad light and your post w

You would be surprised how often flagging is abused on HN. Say something that puts certain companies (you know who you are) in really bad light and your post will be magically flagged.

pengaru 6y ago
There should at least be a setting akin to "show dead" that inhibits the censorship^Wdownvotes-coloring.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  If you click the "X time ago" link above a post, you can read it with full contrast.
Gibbon1 6y ago
My trans friends say flagging is just another tool that's wielded against them.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  Stay classy HN
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ncmncm 6y ago
I typically see this on remarks involving Apple or Microsoft, less so others. (Not sure about Tesla.) I suspect that MS employs a mouse army, but the reason is a mystery; my guess is it is just because they can. Apple downvoting appears to be more fanboi driven.
dang 6y ago
I don't believe that's true. People imagine all kinds of things—invariably sinister, and invariably based on their personal likes and dislikes. The vast majority of this is over-interpreted randomness. That's why the site guidelines ask you not to post evidenceless insinuations of astroturfing or brigading: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. There needs to be something objective to go on, not just however the mind connects the dots based on a few data points. People with opposite tastes to yours connect the dots in an entirely contradictory way, I assure you.
- panpanna 6y ago
  Obviously any claims I make are based on "anecdata", since you guys are the only ones who hold the full data. But please don't dismiss this so quickly. I have seen pretty harmless types of post getting brigaded or flagged pretty consistently. This happens more often to new or less known users - who might have something interesting to say but are quickly shut down. Now, we can always blame it on different tastes or whatever, but knowing that certain companies engage heavily in "online presence" wouldn't it be naive to think they don't operate on HN too??
  - pvg 6y ago
    I have seen pretty harmless types of post getting brigaded or flagged pretty consistently. Can you link some you've recently encountered?
    - panpanna 6y ago
      Well, for obvious reasons they are hard to find afterwards.
      - pvg 6y ago
        What are the obvious reasons? Are you saying posts and comments were outright deleted?
      - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
        Turn on "Show Dead" in your profile. The posts will all become visible and can be linked to (although you will need to instruct potential viewers to also enable the profile setting).
  - dang 6y ago
    It's true that we have more data, but actually the public record is usually more than enough data to cast doubt on most such insinuations. The trouble is that the insinuators don't do the work of searching or checking, because the connect-the-dots activity of the mind feels so compelling. (There's sample bias here though: most people who do bother to either search or check will soon find that there's nothing convincing there and drop the idea. Or they might find a genuine pattern, in which case what they have is more than mere insinuation, and in that case they should send it to hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate. This is in the site guidelines: Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) To pick an example from a different domain, when one commenter accuses another of being a communist shill for China (a ridiculously common recreation), it's easy enough to look at the latter's history. Frequently you'll find that that user has been posting about, say, Julia programming, and house prices in Boise, since 2014. (I made that up but this is typical.) Could they still be a communist agent? Sure they could, but this kind of thinking quickly becomes madness. Occam offers a perfectly good null hypothesis: people just disagree. HN is a large enough population sample that you're going to see users from every background and disagreement about every topic, including on every big tech company, which many users have strong feelings for/against. For some reason, though, internet users aren't satisfied by that and crave much more sinister explanations when things they dislike show up in the forum. There are cognitive biases underlying this (I've written about them at [1] and [2], if you or anyone is curious), and I'm not seeing any information in your comments here that isn't easily within the normal range of such biases. Real astroturfing and other abuses exist—you can look through the endless history of [3] to find plenty of times where I talk about that and a few cases where we actually find it. But there's no question that real abuse is dwarfed by the imaginary abuses that internet users love to speculate about. Therefore the rule is: if you're to going to bring this up you need something objective to go on. It can't just be based on memory and feeling, because memory and feeling are entirely unreliable on this. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20notice%20dislike&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23716395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23716395 [3] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

You would be surprised how often flagging is abused on HN. Say something that puts certain companies (you know who you are) in really bad light and your post will be magically flagged.

pengaru 6y ago

There should at least be a setting akin to "show dead" that inhibits the censorship^Wdownvotes-coloring.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
If you click the "X time ago" link above a post, you can read it with full contrast.

Gibbon1 6y ago

My trans friends say flagging is just another tool that's wielded against them.

Gibbon1 6y ago
Stay classy HN

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ncmncm 6y ago

I typically see this on remarks involving Apple or Microsoft, less so others. (Not sure about Tesla.) I suspect that MS employs a mouse army, but the reason is a mystery; my guess is it is just because they can. Apple downvoting appears to be more fanboi driven.

dang 6y ago

I don't believe that's true. People imagine all kinds of things—invariably sinister, and invariably based on their personal likes and dislikes. The vast majority of this is over-interpreted randomness. That's why the site guidelines ask you not to post evidenceless insinuations of astroturfing or brigading: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. There needs to be something objective to go on, not just however the mind connects the dots based on a few data points. People with opposite tastes to yours connect the dots in an entirely contradictory way, I assure you.

panpanna 6y ago
Obviously any claims I make are based on "anecdata", since you guys are the only ones who hold the full data. But please don't dismiss this so quickly. I have seen pretty harmless types of post getting brigaded or flagged pretty consistently. This happens more often to new or less known users - who might have something interesting to say but are quickly shut down. Now, we can always blame it on different tastes or whatever, but knowing that certain companies engage heavily in "online presence" wouldn't it be naive to think they don't operate on HN too??
- pvg 6y ago
  I have seen pretty harmless types of post getting brigaded or flagged pretty consistently. Can you link some you've recently encountered?
  - panpanna 6y ago
    Well, for obvious reasons they are hard to find afterwards.
    - pvg 6y ago
      What are the obvious reasons? Are you saying posts and comments were outright deleted?
    - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      Turn on "Show Dead" in your profile. The posts will all become visible and can be linked to (although you will need to instruct potential viewers to also enable the profile setting).
- dang 6y ago
  It's true that we have more data, but actually the public record is usually more than enough data to cast doubt on most such insinuations. The trouble is that the insinuators don't do the work of searching or checking, because the connect-the-dots activity of the mind feels so compelling. (There's sample bias here though: most people who do bother to either search or check will soon find that there's nothing convincing there and drop the idea. Or they might find a genuine pattern, in which case what they have is more than mere insinuation, and in that case they should send it to hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate. This is in the site guidelines: Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) To pick an example from a different domain, when one commenter accuses another of being a communist shill for China (a ridiculously common recreation), it's easy enough to look at the latter's history. Frequently you'll find that that user has been posting about, say, Julia programming, and house prices in Boise, since 2014. (I made that up but this is typical.) Could they still be a communist agent? Sure they could, but this kind of thinking quickly becomes madness. Occam offers a perfectly good null hypothesis: people just disagree. HN is a large enough population sample that you're going to see users from every background and disagreement about every topic, including on every big tech company, which many users have strong feelings for/against. For some reason, though, internet users aren't satisfied by that and crave much more sinister explanations when things they dislike show up in the forum. There are cognitive biases underlying this (I've written about them at [1] and [2], if you or anyone is curious), and I'm not seeing any information in your comments here that isn't easily within the normal range of such biases. Real astroturfing and other abuses exist—you can look through the endless history of [3] to find plenty of times where I talk about that and a few cases where we actually find it. But there's no question that real abuse is dwarfed by the imaginary abuses that internet users love to speculate about. Therefore the rule is: if you're to going to bring this up you need something objective to go on. It can't just be based on memory and feeling, because memory and feeling are entirely unreliable on this. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20notice%20dislike&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23716395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23716395 [3] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...