4 ms·

Why was this flagged? There's another thread of this exact same article on the front page at the moment, too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23866926 htt

Why was this flagged? There's another thread of this exact same article on the front page at the moment, too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23866926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23866926

6nf 6y ago
Because the headline is nonsense. The cops are not 'unidentified', they are clearly identified as federal law enforcement and they are arresting people who they believe have broken the law. They are not kidnapping random people off the street.
- op00to 6y ago
  I didn’t see the men identify themselves in the video. Did you? Seems pretty clear cut definition of “unidentified” to not say who you are or what organization you’re with.
  - 6nf 6y ago
    It's on their uniforms
- femiagbabiaka 6y ago
  Where is the clear identification?
  - 6nf 6y ago
    On the uniforms
- hobs 6y ago
  The article says multiple times "They had barely made it half a block when an unmarked minivan pulled up in front of them."
femiagbabiaka 6y ago
Because this is a forum made up of primarily right wing users.
- dang 6y ago
  That's a common misperception. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23807579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23807579. There is a lot more where that came from. People make generalizations about HN based on what they see, but they see what they notice and are far more likely to notice what they dislike and weight it more heavily (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...). Basically that means your image of HN is likely to fill out as an inverse image of your own views. In other words, HN will seem to be full of your enemies. That explains why the other side sees the forum as being made up of their enemies. Everyone here needs to accept—because it's reality—that the forum is simply divided on divisive topics. It's divided roughly the way that society at large is divided in the many countries whose citizens participate here. No doubt there is some skew (because of factors like education and class), but with the exception of a small number of issues like, say, software patents, it's likely not a major skew. Perceptions of major skew on HN are overwhelmingly rooted in cognitive bias, which explains why they're so contradictory and all over the place. One reason this is so important is that when someone perceives HN as being dominated by enemies, they are much more likely to go into battle mode. If instead you perceive it as being a more-or-less representative sample of the world, that's still rough—the world is not as we would like it to be—but there's at least a greater possibility of openness. I wrote more about this here, if anyone's interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - femiagbabiaka 6y ago
    I wrote out a longer post, but decided to delete it because it wasn't as charitable as I wanted it to be. Simply put I disagree. What is considered to be divisive is also political.
dang 6y ago
When you see [flagged] on a story it means users flagged it. We don't know why users flag things, but it's probably not hard to understand in this case. The topic is inflammatory, the threads have both been flamewars, and there's not much information to discuss. Incidentally, some of the users flagging the story are people who, I know from their usernames, are sympathetic to the cause of the protestors. The flagging is therefore not exclusively ideologically driven. Seasoned Hacker News users often flag threads that they feel are bad for the site (e.g. because the thread is a flamewar), separately from their own views on the topic. That's community stewardship, not ideological suppression. Edit: also, is it really a mystery what's happening here? The article linked at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23867746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23867746 seems to explain it pretty well: the feds have sent police to Portland and there's a strong disagreement between the federal government and the state and local governments about whether they should be doing that. If those are the facts, it's not surprising that the threads are flamewars, because there's really not much for commenters to comment on other than to repeat the political commitment they already have.
- fzeroracer 6y ago
  I absolutely believe it is ideologically driven. HN has never been a site to shy away from political flamewars. You can look back through the various posts we have on China here where people rightfully claim the government in China has been responsible for various atrocities. Those threads fall along similar political lines and there's no real debate to be had, yet they still survive [1]. Hell, we can even talk about the recent threads on Trump [2] to see similar threads explode in popularity and make it through unflagged. But we have a very obvious instance of something that all sides should be able to agree on, which is the feds picking up people off the streets without identification or recourse. This shouldn't even have political contention because both the left and the right should be able to agree it's a Bad Thing. Especially here on HN where there's a running trend of anything that involves censorship or rights being taken away [3] [4] [5] [6] gets massive amounts of traction but a story of very obvious government overreach ends up getting flagged. This isn't to say that I think all topics are driven like this. As you've linked before, there are various discussions on police brutality made here on HN. But I've noticed those threads also go through significant periods of being flagged or pushed off the page until there's enough users to vouch for it or vote it up to bypass those flags. Which is to say I firmly believe stories nowadays are being flagged not on the basis of discussion but because of ideological reasons even if there are a few users using flags as it is intended. Otherwise why do those other stories explode in popularity considering they have the same levels of political flamebaiting? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23739567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23739567 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347155 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347155 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23758547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23758547 [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22954765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22954765 [6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23681596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23681596

6nf 6y ago

Because the headline is nonsense. The cops are not 'unidentified', they are clearly identified as federal law enforcement and they are arresting people who they believe have broken the law. They are not kidnapping random people off the street.

op00to 6y ago
I didn’t see the men identify themselves in the video. Did you? Seems pretty clear cut definition of “unidentified” to not say who you are or what organization you’re with.
- 6nf 6y ago
  It's on their uniforms
femiagbabiaka 6y ago
Where is the clear identification?
- 6nf 6y ago
  On the uniforms
hobs 6y ago
The article says multiple times "They had barely made it half a block when an unmarked minivan pulled up in front of them."

femiagbabiaka 6y ago

Because this is a forum made up of primarily right wing users.

dang 6y ago
That's a common misperception. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23807579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23807579. There is a lot more where that came from. People make generalizations about HN based on what they see, but they see what they notice and are far more likely to notice what they dislike and weight it more heavily (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...). Basically that means your image of HN is likely to fill out as an inverse image of your own views. In other words, HN will seem to be full of your enemies. That explains why the other side sees the forum as being made up of their enemies. Everyone here needs to accept—because it's reality—that the forum is simply divided on divisive topics. It's divided roughly the way that society at large is divided in the many countries whose citizens participate here. No doubt there is some skew (because of factors like education and class), but with the exception of a small number of issues like, say, software patents, it's likely not a major skew. Perceptions of major skew on HN are overwhelmingly rooted in cognitive bias, which explains why they're so contradictory and all over the place. One reason this is so important is that when someone perceives HN as being dominated by enemies, they are much more likely to go into battle mode. If instead you perceive it as being a more-or-less representative sample of the world, that's still rough—the world is not as we would like it to be—but there's at least a greater possibility of openness. I wrote more about this here, if anyone's interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- femiagbabiaka 6y ago
  I wrote out a longer post, but decided to delete it because it wasn't as charitable as I wanted it to be. Simply put I disagree. What is considered to be divisive is also political.

dang 6y ago

When you see [flagged] on a story it means users flagged it. We don't know why users flag things, but it's probably not hard to understand in this case. The topic is inflammatory, the threads have both been flamewars, and there's not much information to discuss. Incidentally, some of the users flagging the story are people who, I know from their usernames, are sympathetic to the cause of the protestors. The flagging is therefore not exclusively ideologically driven. Seasoned Hacker News users often flag threads that they feel are bad for the site (e.g. because the thread is a flamewar), separately from their own views on the topic. That's community stewardship, not ideological suppression. Edit: also, is it really a mystery what's happening here? The article linked at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23867746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23867746 seems to explain it pretty well: the feds have sent police to Portland and there's a strong disagreement between the federal government and the state and local governments about whether they should be doing that. If those are the facts, it's not surprising that the threads are flamewars, because there's really not much for commenters to comment on other than to repeat the political commitment they already have.

fzeroracer 6y ago
I absolutely believe it is ideologically driven. HN has never been a site to shy away from political flamewars. You can look back through the various posts we have on China here where people rightfully claim the government in China has been responsible for various atrocities. Those threads fall along similar political lines and there's no real debate to be had, yet they still survive [1]. Hell, we can even talk about the recent threads on Trump [2] to see similar threads explode in popularity and make it through unflagged. But we have a very obvious instance of something that all sides should be able to agree on, which is the feds picking up people off the streets without identification or recourse. This shouldn't even have political contention because both the left and the right should be able to agree it's a Bad Thing. Especially here on HN where there's a running trend of anything that involves censorship or rights being taken away [3] [4] [5] [6] gets massive amounts of traction but a story of very obvious government overreach ends up getting flagged. This isn't to say that I think all topics are driven like this. As you've linked before, there are various discussions on police brutality made here on HN. But I've noticed those threads also go through significant periods of being flagged or pushed off the page until there's enough users to vouch for it or vote it up to bypass those flags. Which is to say I firmly believe stories nowadays are being flagged not on the basis of discussion but because of ideological reasons even if there are a few users using flags as it is intended. Otherwise why do those other stories explode in popularity considering they have the same levels of political flamebaiting? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23739567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23739567 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347155 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347155 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23758547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23758547 [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22954765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22954765 [6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23681596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23681596