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>More than 1000 upvotes on a piece of false information Not only upvoting the story but also downvoting posters to minus-12 who tried to counteract it with co

by jasode 6y ago

>More than 1000 upvotes on a piece of false information Not only upvoting the story but also downvoting posters to minus-12 who tried to counteract it with correct information: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=hn_check https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=hn_check [ footnote: his profile was -12 at the time I wrote the comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=hn_check https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=hn_check ] [ another edit:] Sorry for confusion. I wasn't trying to say that _one_ comment got downvoted to -12. His 2 top-level comments ("and this submission is just farcically wrong" and "This isn't correct at all.") ... were at various levels of grey so those 2 comments contributed -4 or -5 or more to the -12. I do agree his tone (especially the [dead] comments) contributed to negative scores but it can simultaneously be true that downvoters thought he was incorrect. This was how his downvotes looked early this morning: https://imgur.com/a/GuTffzP https://imgur.com/a/GuTffzP The top-level comments have since been upvoted so they are no longer greyed out.

fermienrico 6y ago
This is scary. And should scare everyone. We need to remove downvoting temporarily for next 6 months. See how things pan out. Cancel culture. Dissent and attack on free speech. Smearing of truth. People are afraid to speak up. Chilling effect. @dang - this is urgently needed. It’s raising alarm bells like no other to me.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  I think this guy downvoted for being rude, not necessarily for being wrong, although probably everyone who downvoted him thought he was wrong as well, when he was correct.
  - oblio 6y ago
    > when he was correct. How do you know he was correct? This whole "cancel culture" thing is a 2020 thing, while HN has operated like this since when? 2005? HN has been "cancelling" comments since forever, and it's suddenly a problem? It's part of the rules of the game here :-) You play or you don't.
    - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      ok when I said he was correct I meant his main point was correct, which I did not see as the cancel culture thing but rather that Apple does not keep the 30% commission. The cancel culture thing I saw as more of the rudeness. on edit: clarified what I meant by correct better
- amelius 6y ago
  I would love to see some academic research on the topic of forum moderation. The problem is probably as difficult as fixing democracy, but it would be nice to see what progress we have made in this area.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Community moderation has been a problem for a long time. There's a paper on Lucasarts "Habitat" MMO from the mid-80s! (can't find it at the moment). There's also JC Hertz's somewhat sensationalised anthropology of online culture from the 90s, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2284572.Surfing_on_the_Internet https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2284572.Surfing_on_the_I... A number of experiments were made and abandoned; Slashdot's different types of up/down vote that users could weight themselves, Advogato's trust network, and so on.
    - amelius 6y ago
      Thanks for the links. I found that this link might be a good entry point into the field: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation_system But I don't like the word "reputation" as it goes against the idea that people who are new might have good input too. Using reputation as a discriminator is very much like committing an ad-hominem fallacy. But perhaps that's the best we can do.
      - pjc50 6y ago
        A big problem is that an apparent new contributor may not actually be either new, or even a person. Only then can you determine that they're not somebody you've previously assigned a negative reputation value to. (mind you, this is not at all sufficient; a major problem of the present day is people tweeting abuse from positions of power under their real names)
  - HPsquared 6y ago
    As moderated online spaces continue to displace traditional media, forum moderation itself has a growing influence on modern democracy.
- mellosouls 6y ago
  I disagree with this (tho I acknowledge the dissent points and I'm one of those who moans occasionally - with the corresponding downvote hit about unreasonable downvoting). I've also never (yet) downvoted anybody despite severe provocation :) I think some limits on downvoting might be useful (some of which might already be in place, I can't remember). e.g. You can't downvote replies to your comment. (Already in place). A limit to downvotes to a particular comment. (I thought this was in place but can't find a reference) Time limit on downvotes. (I think this is already in place). X downvotes use up Y karma. I would also like a guideline that you should only upvote or downvote based on the quality of the comment rather than whether you don't like what you think of the commenter...
- pjc50 6y ago
  Counterpoint: downvoting is how Hacker News has maintained a comparatively high quality focused discussion while having only one full time moderator. It's not without its disadvantages - certain things will get instaflagged off the front page, especially "sexism in tech" stories. But it's like a firewall. If you don't have one, you get pwned eventually. Occasionally you get "Boston Bomber" moments, and something true gets downvoted. That is on the poster to figure out why and how to present it in a way that will be accepted. (I have 60k karma, so I know how to play ranked competitive HN, but even I still get downvoted occasionally if I'm lazy about sourcing or needlessly confrontational) (edit: first downvote received in less than thirty seconds. Walked into that one, I suppose. Now leaving the edit window at +3. Sorry, +8. You're not really supposed to threadsit your own comments like this, but since we're talking about the voting system I thought I'd mention it)
  - fermienrico 6y ago
    I think what I see is the following: Side A: 1000+ voted story, with Apple’s recent App Store sentiments, emotionally engaging. This is the mob. Side B: A lone fact checker. The comment posted by this fact checker was not ambiguous. It literally said that this whole thread is false. That kind of gravity in a comment is different from your usual discourse. Side B is overrun by Side A. I am seeing this in our society, not just on this forum. I feel like it’s different than you and I discussing whether tabs or spaces are better. It’s being overrun by emotions. We need to allow criticisms to surface and counterpoints to be heard when they’re devoid of attacks/trolling. Downvoting is creating a rather reinforcing mechanism for the mob the feel good about their stance. Further fueling it. I am spooked by the current atmosphere on the internet. And I’m spooked by many instances of mob mentality in our society. Note: I am not talking about US protests.
    - pjc50 6y ago
      What makes side B a "fact checker"? How can you identify them as such? The real problem is that for pretty much any claim I can find you a tweet saying it was false. That doesn't help. We're into relative assessments of credibility by origin here. It looks like the original tweet author has retracted, which is pretty convincing.
- hardlianotion 6y ago
  The point is a serious one and really shouldn't be downvoted. On balance, I disagree, but social bubbles are a systemic risk in our online communities, and the way downvote buttons are often used can promote a groupthink tendency,
- corobo 6y ago
  definition of overreacting
- The_rationalist 6y ago
  I've been downvoted for stating a simple sourced fact last week. It happens all the time, when there are echo chamber or when the truth hurt some fanatics feelings they downvote in order to hide the truth, truth which hurt their ridiculously high sensitivity. https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=23977461&goto=item%3Fid%3D23976680%2323977461 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=23977461&goto=item%3Fi... Such people should be accountable and loose their ability to downvote (and to a lesser extent to upvote) As they actively hurt the epistomological quality of HN comments So here's the idea: we should be able to call a moderator/contributor, explain to him why you think the downvoting is unfair and he will give retroactions.
  - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
    It's possible that you were downvoted for irrelevancy? Dunno, I almost never downvote.
    - The_rationalist 6y ago
      I don't see how that would be irrelevant. I talked about async stack trace and the original blog post talked about it. BTW a guy thanked me because he found my comment useful.
- aaron695 6y ago
  Downvoting has 13 years of work and stress testing by 10,000s of people, you don't just turn it off. Software 101, something 10 years old has some sort of proportional to 10 years worth of work in it. It's also not cancel culture here yet, flagged and dead are viewable. Part of the reason HN has defences against cancel culture is they don't make changes.
  - lazyjones 6y ago
    > Downvoting has 13 years of work and stress testing by 10,000s of people, you don't just turn it off. This may be an argument for its correct functioning in the technical sense but is blatantly ignorant on changes in society and communication. If a mechanism becomes misused and exploited after a community grows and welcomes people from other communities, it has to be reconsidered. Social interaction definitely doesn't scale smoothly.
- pc86 6y ago
  This is ridiculous, pearl-clutching nonsense. > This is scary. That a profile where half the comments are rude gets downvoted? If I want to get called an asshole and read rude, barely intelligible comments I'll go to 4chan. You can disagree and present well-reasoned arguments without devolving to "LOL WAT? U IDIOTS" > We need to remove downvoting temporarily for next 6 months. "Need" is an overstatement if I've ever heard one, wow. Sort of an arbitrary timeline, too. > Cancel culture. Equating downvoting and community moderation with "cancel culture" is pretty far off base. > Dissent and attack on free speech. You have absolutely no right to free speech on HN, nor should you, nor did you ever, nor is that what free speech actually means. The number of people who equate "the government shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech" with "I can be an asshole in a private forum and you're not allowed to call me an asshole" is astounding, and that is the real problem here. > Smearing of truth. By downvoting rude comments? > People are afraid to speak up. They're demonstrably not. > Chilling effect. Word salad. > @dang - this is urgently needed. It's not. > It’s raising alarm bells like no other to me. By most news accounts the US is careening toward a totalitarian apocalypse, China is literally sending train loads of Uighur muslims to re-education camps, and we're in the middle (or start, in the US) of a global pandemic, but HN's community moderation standards and practices are what's got your spidey sense tingling?
- lazyjones 6y ago
  That you are being downvoted to oblivion is another indication that something is wrong. Slashdot had a better moderation system ca. 20 years ago - you needed a reason along with the downvote and people would think twice about downvoting for "comment says something that may be factually right but somehow hurts my feelings or aligns with orange man". Meta-moderation also helped. The moderator here is doing a good job, but perhaps he's being overwhelmed lately by the polarization and extreme groupthink on many issues.
tome 6y ago
How do you know it's -12, just out of interest?
- andreareina 6y ago
  The comment isn't at -12, the poster's overall karma (visible on the user's profile) is.
metafunctor 6y ago
I’m pretty sure the downvotes are from shouting and calling people gullible.
- kebman 6y ago
  I've been downvoted several times for asking simple questions. No shouting or accusations needed. It's enough that you are seen as political, and your post will be downvoted. Sadly this is turning HN into a stigmatizing and self-censoring echo chamber. I'm glad that HN has posted this retraction, though.
  - behnamoh 6y ago
    True, but incidents like this make me wonder what other HN posts I have believed simply because they were upvoted.
paublyrne 6y ago
It seems at the moment anyway that the poster's most downvoted comments are the ones where he calls people dumb and uses a less than civil tone.
- mattmanser 6y ago
  Does he have a civil tone? Read his profile status and comments, that person is a troll and better if he was banned from HN.
  - jagged-chisel 6y ago
    "...less than civil" So no. No civil tone.
    - travisjungroth 6y ago
      "He's got no tone!" Picking up Seinfeld vibes.
- aspenmayer 6y ago
  If only we had vote arrows and vote reasons, then we would know the disposition of the voters and their interpretation which is associated with the downvote. Slashdot has had this forever, and it works great with their user moderation and meta-moderation system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderation_system#User_moderation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderation_system#User_moderat...
setr 6y ago
don't downvotes stop at -4, for a single post? going through his history, like 50% are gray -- fair or not, didn't bother reading -- but I don't think its from this one event.
DanBC 6y ago
> Not only upvoting the story but also downvoting posters to minus-12 You've misunderstood how downvotes work. That person's account has multiple downvoted and flagged comments in other threads. (You can see these if you have "showdead" set to "on" in your profile.) I don't think an account gets to -12 on one downvoted comment, I don't think that's currently possible.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- corin_ 6y ago
  If an account is created and posts a single comment that lots of people downvote it, that wouldn't send their profile to (and beyond) -12? (Generally speaking, I know the user discussed has commented more than once.)
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    Based on some of my comments that have been nuked from orbit, I thought there was a per-comment score limit of -3 (so a net -4) for karma scoring purposes.
    - walterbell 6y ago
      A comment goes near-invisible at -3 or -4, so most individuals won't read it or downvote further. A motivated brigade can still keep downvoting, e.g. more than 20 downvotes on a single comment. Brigade downvoting could incentivize future self-censorship. But it's also a strong signal for the Streisand effect, which can be surfaced by a bot and reposted elsewhere.
      - DanBC 6y ago
        Here's a link from dang. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18152047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18152047 > HN's software puts a floor of -4 on downvoted comments.
solidasparagus 6y ago
I mean they were factually correct but that doesn't take away from the extremely toxic way they interact with the community. I think the comment deserves to be downvoted (although that doesn't change the overall point that accurate information wasn't bubbling up). This is their bio: "HN was created as an example of how to foment Dunning-Kruger among a community. Nowhere else will you find such a wonderful collection of imaginary "experts". Today's outrage -- someone who is clearly wrong about how refunds on the App Store work, yet the overwhelming majority of HN are too profoundly stupid/ignorant/myopic to see the error and just run with it. Top of the front page, thousands of comments...original guy retracts it. Hours later the story is still here and still getting comments from the idiot base. I'd be embarrassed to be herding this collection of dumbshits." That sort of approach to talking with HN is going to be downvoted. And I would argue deservedly so.
- dgudkov 6y ago
  It could be the other way around. The person came to HN in a good faith but faced unfair downvoting of otherwise reasonable comments. Which eventually made the person write in their profile what's currently written. Sometimes people become toxic because they weren't treated fairly.
  - merpnderp 6y ago
    This thread shouldn't be about how the guy was a meany poo-poo pants, but about what is it with today's world that makes people fall for the most unbelievable things based on the flimsiest of evidence. People with harsh words speaking the truth are far less worrisome than mobs being suckered by obvious falsehoods based on 10 second video clips, a random tweet, or some random post on HN's.
  - soco 6y ago
    You're possibly right. Which doesn't make them less toxic or more frequentable, still.
oefrha 6y ago
> This was how his downvotes looked early this morning: https://imgur.com/a/GuTffzP https://imgur.com/a/GuTffzP Judging from your screenshot I'd say that comment was styled as .commtext.c5a: .c5a, .c5a a:link, .c5a a:visited { color:#5a5a5a; } It only takes one net downvote to get there. Even one fat finger could flip that, and I fat finger on mobile a lot. Anyway, discussions on downvotes are boring and guidelines-breaking, and even worse when it's misinformation, as a single comment could only contribute -4. I've emailed the mods to detach this thread. Edit: And... this comment has promptly contributed -4 within ten minutes. I don't really give a crap since I've got enough points to withstand a scratch like this. But the irony of being heavily downvoted for correcting misinformation on a thread supposedly correcting misinformation...
- jayrice257 6y ago
  More like your garbage post got downvoted for good reason and you're defending it with "how ironic". It's actually not at all ironic and no one cares you sent this to a mod
coronadisaster 6y ago
I would like to read flagged comments, is it possible?
- owenmarshall 6y ago
  Click your username name up at the top of the page and turn on showdead. I'm not certain it works for all flagged comments, but it definitely shows you more than you'd see otherwise.
  - globular-toast 6y ago
    I don't think this allows you to see flagged comments. There is an elite group on HN which are allowed to flag comments and these really will be hidden from everyone.
    - viraptor 6y ago
      It's not really an elite group since I'm in it :-P You can flag after you get enough points. I can't say I've ever seen flagged things disappear. They may be marked "[flagged][dead]" but the content is still there.
      - PaulHoule 6y ago
        Multiple people have to flag something to make it [dead].
        dfxm12 6y ago
        Does anyone know if a post is flagged (and normally hidden) after one poster flags it or is there some other way? Is there any mod review that takes places before (or after)?
        viraptor 6y ago
        It's not just one person normally. Not only you can click "flag" and find that no change was made, you can also vouch for flagged posts to make them visible again.
NicoJuicy 6y ago
Just a tip, when you want to correct people. Don't end with: > Is this community this clueless?
neya 6y ago
Maybe, just maybe, could it be because of his tone which masked the point he was trying to get across?
whiddershins 6y ago
People are saying stuff about tone here. I have learned, as most of us have, that communication technique has everything to do with how well information is received. But IMO we need to stop acting like that’s a good thing. It’s an unfortunate reality. Niceness in not a virtue. We should be careful not to elevate it to such. Truth is more important that how something makes you feel. Honestly is more primary than politeness. The problem with believing people based on how well they communicate should be obvious: if someone can communicate well, it might alter the chances towards more expertise, but it is not a guarantee. At a certain point we start fetishizing polite communication. This isn’t wholly different from liking people more because they are good looking. It’s inevitable that people act that way, but we shouldn’t celebrate it, should try to resist it.
- erikerikson 6y ago
  I've struggled with this myself and I've also found that stating truth and using civil words are not mutually exclusive. Like you wrote, the words used can promote truth to a greater or lesser extent. Almost always a polite but confident phrasing increases the transmission and replication of truth. It does take more work. It does take increased linguistic and emotional skill (and work). It gets easier with practice.
rattray 6y ago
Those comments were downvoted, but comments elsewhere on the thread (pretty far down) which provided anecdata supporting his point were not. I think the bigger question we should be asking ourselves is why people who had counter claims weren't higher up in the thread. May not be a fault of the community, I'm not sure.
- arcticfox 6y ago
  Also funny (worrisome?) in retrospect is people that believed the Tweet, thought Apple was behaving fairly, and argued that it simply wasn't a big deal.
  - tzs 6y ago
    I don't think that is either funny or worrisome, at least to those somewhat familiar with credit card processing. The way credit card processing fees work is that there are two kinds: 1. Per transaction fees, and 2. Percentage fees. Not all per transaction fees apply to every transaction but if one does it is the same amount on every transaction. Not all percentage fees apply to every transaction, but when they do the amount is a percent of the charge amount, with the percentage the same for every transaction. The big transaction fee is the "authorization fee". For a small merchant this might be $0.25-$0.30. If you are bigger they might give you a lower fee. I work at a company that is small now, but had a brief period of high sales and we were given $0.20 which thankfully has stuck. I've read that this can go as low as maybe $0.15 and perhaps even lower for really big merchants. Another transaction fee is the AVS fee, which is $0.02. You are hit with this on any transaction where you supply address information and ask the card processing system if that matches the on-file information for the card. MasterCard has a $0.0195 fee called the NABU fee, which stands for something like "National Brand Use", which we apparently pay for the privilege of using the name MasterCard. For the percentage fees, there will be a certain base percentage you are always hit with, and then various others that apply to some transactions. For all but very large merchants the base might be around 2% or so. I'm not sure what it is for the very largest. (The above is if you have a merchant account yourself and directly use a payment processor like Authorize.Net or Merchant e-Solutions (MES). If you go through someone one step removed they might simplify it into one fixed fee per transaction plus either a fixed percentage fee or a tiered percentage fee system where a given charge gets one of the tiers. Apple almost certainly does not go through an intermediary like that. They either go through someone like Authorize.Net or MES, or maybe even are big enough to have access at an even lower level). Anyway, the thing about this is that when you process a refund all that is guaranteed is that the credit card user gets their money back. Those fees you paid to have the charge processed? Some of them stick, such as the authorization fee. Furthermore, the refund itself is a transaction that will incur some of the per transaction fees (I don't think it incurs any of the percentage fees but I'm not absolutely certain--credit card processing bills are often extremely confusing and I've never been able to figure out from looking at the bills from at least 5 different processors we've used exactly what fees apply). Assuming that most Apple app sales are $0.99, and taking into account the processing the refund will incur at least some fees, and allowing that Apple certainly gets better rates than I've ever seen, I can still easily believe that the net fees Apple pays on a combined $0.99 charge and $0.99 refund are in the ballpark of $0.30. And since the whole freaking credit card system is set up, or at least appears to be from a merchant's point of view, to make sure that of all the parties involved in a transactions--the customer, the merchant, the merchant bank, the payment processor, the credit card companies, and the issuing bank--it is the merchant that bears the costs when anything happens that is going to cost someone money, nearly everyone who accepts credit cards as payments reacted to the claim that Apple keeps the 30% with "...and in equally unexpected news, the Sun rose this morning".
castratikron 6y ago
Yup. This will make it to n-gate alright.
ptero 6y ago
I think HN works pretty well. Yes, some wrong material may get upvoted to the top of HN, but then it usually gets corrected quickly. In fact, the correction is staying on top of HN longer than original and the comments correcting the error in the original thread have been upvoted, too. That's a pretty efficient way to handle errors. I wish mass media worked the same way. My 2c.
gowld 6y ago
That comment was likely downvoted for toxic tone, and adding no authoritative information..
dang 6y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23996123 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23996123.

by jasode 6y ago

fermienrico 6y ago

This is scary. And should scare everyone. We need to remove downvoting temporarily for next 6 months. See how things pan out. Cancel culture. Dissent and attack on free speech. Smearing of truth. People are afraid to speak up. Chilling effect. @dang - this is urgently needed. It’s raising alarm bells like no other to me.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago
I think this guy downvoted for being rude, not necessarily for being wrong, although probably everyone who downvoted him thought he was wrong as well, when he was correct.
- oblio 6y ago
  > when he was correct. How do you know he was correct? This whole "cancel culture" thing is a 2020 thing, while HN has operated like this since when? 2005? HN has been "cancelling" comments since forever, and it's suddenly a problem? It's part of the rules of the game here :-) You play or you don't.
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    ok when I said he was correct I meant his main point was correct, which I did not see as the cancel culture thing but rather that Apple does not keep the 30% commission. The cancel culture thing I saw as more of the rudeness. on edit: clarified what I meant by correct better
amelius 6y ago
I would love to see some academic research on the topic of forum moderation. The problem is probably as difficult as fixing democracy, but it would be nice to see what progress we have made in this area.
- pjc50 6y ago
  Community moderation has been a problem for a long time. There's a paper on Lucasarts "Habitat" MMO from the mid-80s! (can't find it at the moment). There's also JC Hertz's somewhat sensationalised anthropology of online culture from the 90s, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2284572.Surfing_on_the_Internet https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2284572.Surfing_on_the_I... A number of experiments were made and abandoned; Slashdot's different types of up/down vote that users could weight themselves, Advogato's trust network, and so on.
  - amelius 6y ago
    Thanks for the links. I found that this link might be a good entry point into the field: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation_system But I don't like the word "reputation" as it goes against the idea that people who are new might have good input too. Using reputation as a discriminator is very much like committing an ad-hominem fallacy. But perhaps that's the best we can do.
    - pjc50 6y ago
      A big problem is that an apparent new contributor may not actually be either new, or even a person. Only then can you determine that they're not somebody you've previously assigned a negative reputation value to. (mind you, this is not at all sufficient; a major problem of the present day is people tweeting abuse from positions of power under their real names)
- HPsquared 6y ago
  As moderated online spaces continue to displace traditional media, forum moderation itself has a growing influence on modern democracy.
mellosouls 6y ago
I disagree with this (tho I acknowledge the dissent points and I'm one of those who moans occasionally - with the corresponding downvote hit about unreasonable downvoting). I've also never (yet) downvoted anybody despite severe provocation :) I think some limits on downvoting might be useful (some of which might already be in place, I can't remember). e.g. You can't downvote replies to your comment. (Already in place). A limit to downvotes to a particular comment. (I thought this was in place but can't find a reference) Time limit on downvotes. (I think this is already in place). X downvotes use up Y karma. I would also like a guideline that you should only upvote or downvote based on the quality of the comment rather than whether you don't like what you think of the commenter...
pjc50 6y ago
Counterpoint: downvoting is how Hacker News has maintained a comparatively high quality focused discussion while having only one full time moderator. It's not without its disadvantages - certain things will get instaflagged off the front page, especially "sexism in tech" stories. But it's like a firewall. If you don't have one, you get pwned eventually. Occasionally you get "Boston Bomber" moments, and something true gets downvoted. That is on the poster to figure out why and how to present it in a way that will be accepted. (I have 60k karma, so I know how to play ranked competitive HN, but even I still get downvoted occasionally if I'm lazy about sourcing or needlessly confrontational) (edit: first downvote received in less than thirty seconds. Walked into that one, I suppose. Now leaving the edit window at +3. Sorry, +8. You're not really supposed to threadsit your own comments like this, but since we're talking about the voting system I thought I'd mention it)
- fermienrico 6y ago
  I think what I see is the following: Side A: 1000+ voted story, with Apple’s recent App Store sentiments, emotionally engaging. This is the mob. Side B: A lone fact checker. The comment posted by this fact checker was not ambiguous. It literally said that this whole thread is false. That kind of gravity in a comment is different from your usual discourse. Side B is overrun by Side A. I am seeing this in our society, not just on this forum. I feel like it’s different than you and I discussing whether tabs or spaces are better. It’s being overrun by emotions. We need to allow criticisms to surface and counterpoints to be heard when they’re devoid of attacks/trolling. Downvoting is creating a rather reinforcing mechanism for the mob the feel good about their stance. Further fueling it. I am spooked by the current atmosphere on the internet. And I’m spooked by many instances of mob mentality in our society. Note: I am not talking about US protests.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    What makes side B a "fact checker"? How can you identify them as such? The real problem is that for pretty much any claim I can find you a tweet saying it was false. That doesn't help. We're into relative assessments of credibility by origin here. It looks like the original tweet author has retracted, which is pretty convincing.
hardlianotion 6y ago
The point is a serious one and really shouldn't be downvoted. On balance, I disagree, but social bubbles are a systemic risk in our online communities, and the way downvote buttons are often used can promote a groupthink tendency,
corobo 6y ago
definition of overreacting
The_rationalist 6y ago
I've been downvoted for stating a simple sourced fact last week. It happens all the time, when there are echo chamber or when the truth hurt some fanatics feelings they downvote in order to hide the truth, truth which hurt their ridiculously high sensitivity. https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=23977461&goto=item%3Fid%3D23976680%2323977461 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=23977461&goto=item%3Fi... Such people should be accountable and loose their ability to downvote (and to a lesser extent to upvote) As they actively hurt the epistomological quality of HN comments So here's the idea: we should be able to call a moderator/contributor, explain to him why you think the downvoting is unfair and he will give retroactions.
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  It's possible that you were downvoted for irrelevancy? Dunno, I almost never downvote.
  - The_rationalist 6y ago
    I don't see how that would be irrelevant. I talked about async stack trace and the original blog post talked about it. BTW a guy thanked me because he found my comment useful.
aaron695 6y ago
Downvoting has 13 years of work and stress testing by 10,000s of people, you don't just turn it off. Software 101, something 10 years old has some sort of proportional to 10 years worth of work in it. It's also not cancel culture here yet, flagged and dead are viewable. Part of the reason HN has defences against cancel culture is they don't make changes.
- lazyjones 6y ago
  > Downvoting has 13 years of work and stress testing by 10,000s of people, you don't just turn it off. This may be an argument for its correct functioning in the technical sense but is blatantly ignorant on changes in society and communication. If a mechanism becomes misused and exploited after a community grows and welcomes people from other communities, it has to be reconsidered. Social interaction definitely doesn't scale smoothly.
pc86 6y ago
This is ridiculous, pearl-clutching nonsense. > This is scary. That a profile where half the comments are rude gets downvoted? If I want to get called an asshole and read rude, barely intelligible comments I'll go to 4chan. You can disagree and present well-reasoned arguments without devolving to "LOL WAT? U IDIOTS" > We need to remove downvoting temporarily for next 6 months. "Need" is an overstatement if I've ever heard one, wow. Sort of an arbitrary timeline, too. > Cancel culture. Equating downvoting and community moderation with "cancel culture" is pretty far off base. > Dissent and attack on free speech. You have absolutely no right to free speech on HN, nor should you, nor did you ever, nor is that what free speech actually means. The number of people who equate "the government shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech" with "I can be an asshole in a private forum and you're not allowed to call me an asshole" is astounding, and that is the real problem here. > Smearing of truth. By downvoting rude comments? > People are afraid to speak up. They're demonstrably not. > Chilling effect. Word salad. > @dang - this is urgently needed. It's not. > It’s raising alarm bells like no other to me. By most news accounts the US is careening toward a totalitarian apocalypse, China is literally sending train loads of Uighur muslims to re-education camps, and we're in the middle (or start, in the US) of a global pandemic, but HN's community moderation standards and practices are what's got your spidey sense tingling?
lazyjones 6y ago
That you are being downvoted to oblivion is another indication that something is wrong. Slashdot had a better moderation system ca. 20 years ago - you needed a reason along with the downvote and people would think twice about downvoting for "comment says something that may be factually right but somehow hurts my feelings or aligns with orange man". Meta-moderation also helped. The moderator here is doing a good job, but perhaps he's being overwhelmed lately by the polarization and extreme groupthink on many issues.

tome 6y ago

How do you know it's -12, just out of interest?

andreareina 6y ago
The comment isn't at -12, the poster's overall karma (visible on the user's profile) is.

metafunctor 6y ago

I’m pretty sure the downvotes are from shouting and calling people gullible.

kebman 6y ago
I've been downvoted several times for asking simple questions. No shouting or accusations needed. It's enough that you are seen as political, and your post will be downvoted. Sadly this is turning HN into a stigmatizing and self-censoring echo chamber. I'm glad that HN has posted this retraction, though.
- behnamoh 6y ago
  True, but incidents like this make me wonder what other HN posts I have believed simply because they were upvoted.

paublyrne 6y ago

It seems at the moment anyway that the poster's most downvoted comments are the ones where he calls people dumb and uses a less than civil tone.

mattmanser 6y ago
Does he have a civil tone? Read his profile status and comments, that person is a troll and better if he was banned from HN.
- jagged-chisel 6y ago
  "...less than civil" So no. No civil tone.
  - travisjungroth 6y ago
    "He's got no tone!" Picking up Seinfeld vibes.
aspenmayer 6y ago
If only we had vote arrows and vote reasons, then we would know the disposition of the voters and their interpretation which is associated with the downvote. Slashdot has had this forever, and it works great with their user moderation and meta-moderation system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderation_system#User_moderation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderation_system#User_moderat...

setr 6y ago

don't downvotes stop at -4, for a single post? going through his history, like 50% are gray -- fair or not, didn't bother reading -- but I don't think its from this one event.

DanBC 6y ago

> Not only upvoting the story but also downvoting posters to minus-12 You've misunderstood how downvotes work. That person's account has multiple downvoted and flagged comments in other threads. (You can see these if you have "showdead" set to "on" in your profile.) I don't think an account gets to -12 on one downvoted comment, I don't think that's currently possible.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
corin_ 6y ago
If an account is created and posts a single comment that lots of people downvote it, that wouldn't send their profile to (and beyond) -12? (Generally speaking, I know the user discussed has commented more than once.)
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Based on some of my comments that have been nuked from orbit, I thought there was a per-comment score limit of -3 (so a net -4) for karma scoring purposes.
  - walterbell 6y ago
    A comment goes near-invisible at -3 or -4, so most individuals won't read it or downvote further. A motivated brigade can still keep downvoting, e.g. more than 20 downvotes on a single comment. Brigade downvoting could incentivize future self-censorship. But it's also a strong signal for the Streisand effect, which can be surfaced by a bot and reposted elsewhere.
    - DanBC 6y ago
      Here's a link from dang. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18152047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18152047 > HN's software puts a floor of -4 on downvoted comments.

solidasparagus 6y ago

I mean they were factually correct but that doesn't take away from the extremely toxic way they interact with the community. I think the comment deserves to be downvoted (although that doesn't change the overall point that accurate information wasn't bubbling up). This is their bio: "HN was created as an example of how to foment Dunning-Kruger among a community. Nowhere else will you find such a wonderful collection of imaginary "experts". Today's outrage -- someone who is clearly wrong about how refunds on the App Store work, yet the overwhelming majority of HN are too profoundly stupid/ignorant/myopic to see the error and just run with it. Top of the front page, thousands of comments...original guy retracts it. Hours later the story is still here and still getting comments from the idiot base. I'd be embarrassed to be herding this collection of dumbshits." That sort of approach to talking with HN is going to be downvoted. And I would argue deservedly so.

dgudkov 6y ago
It could be the other way around. The person came to HN in a good faith but faced unfair downvoting of otherwise reasonable comments. Which eventually made the person write in their profile what's currently written. Sometimes people become toxic because they weren't treated fairly.
- merpnderp 6y ago
  This thread shouldn't be about how the guy was a meany poo-poo pants, but about what is it with today's world that makes people fall for the most unbelievable things based on the flimsiest of evidence. People with harsh words speaking the truth are far less worrisome than mobs being suckered by obvious falsehoods based on 10 second video clips, a random tweet, or some random post on HN's.
- soco 6y ago
  You're possibly right. Which doesn't make them less toxic or more frequentable, still.

oefrha 6y ago

> This was how his downvotes looked early this morning: https://imgur.com/a/GuTffzP https://imgur.com/a/GuTffzP Judging from your screenshot I'd say that comment was styled as .commtext.c5a: .c5a, .c5a a:link, .c5a a:visited { color:#5a5a5a; } It only takes one net downvote to get there. Even one fat finger could flip that, and I fat finger on mobile a lot. Anyway, discussions on downvotes are boring and guidelines-breaking, and even worse when it's misinformation, as a single comment could only contribute -4. I've emailed the mods to detach this thread. Edit: And... this comment has promptly contributed -4 within ten minutes. I don't really give a crap since I've got enough points to withstand a scratch like this. But the irony of being heavily downvoted for correcting misinformation on a thread supposedly correcting misinformation...

jayrice257 6y ago
More like your garbage post got downvoted for good reason and you're defending it with "how ironic". It's actually not at all ironic and no one cares you sent this to a mod

coronadisaster 6y ago

I would like to read flagged comments, is it possible?

owenmarshall 6y ago
Click your username name up at the top of the page and turn on showdead. I'm not certain it works for all flagged comments, but it definitely shows you more than you'd see otherwise.
- globular-toast 6y ago
  I don't think this allows you to see flagged comments. There is an elite group on HN which are allowed to flag comments and these really will be hidden from everyone.
  - viraptor 6y ago
    It's not really an elite group since I'm in it :-P You can flag after you get enough points. I can't say I've ever seen flagged things disappear. They may be marked "[flagged][dead]" but the content is still there.
    - PaulHoule 6y ago
      Multiple people have to flag something to make it [dead].
      - dfxm12 6y ago
        Does anyone know if a post is flagged (and normally hidden) after one poster flags it or is there some other way? Is there any mod review that takes places before (or after)?
        viraptor 6y ago
        It's not just one person normally. Not only you can click "flag" and find that no change was made, you can also vouch for flagged posts to make them visible again.

NicoJuicy 6y ago

Just a tip, when you want to correct people. Don't end with: > Is this community this clueless?

neya 6y ago

Maybe, just maybe, could it be because of his tone which masked the point he was trying to get across?

whiddershins 6y ago

People are saying stuff about tone here. I have learned, as most of us have, that communication technique has everything to do with how well information is received. But IMO we need to stop acting like that’s a good thing. It’s an unfortunate reality. Niceness in not a virtue. We should be careful not to elevate it to such. Truth is more important that how something makes you feel. Honestly is more primary than politeness. The problem with believing people based on how well they communicate should be obvious: if someone can communicate well, it might alter the chances towards more expertise, but it is not a guarantee. At a certain point we start fetishizing polite communication. This isn’t wholly different from liking people more because they are good looking. It’s inevitable that people act that way, but we shouldn’t celebrate it, should try to resist it.

erikerikson 6y ago
I've struggled with this myself and I've also found that stating truth and using civil words are not mutually exclusive. Like you wrote, the words used can promote truth to a greater or lesser extent. Almost always a polite but confident phrasing increases the transmission and replication of truth. It does take more work. It does take increased linguistic and emotional skill (and work). It gets easier with practice.

rattray 6y ago

Those comments were downvoted, but comments elsewhere on the thread (pretty far down) which provided anecdata supporting his point were not. I think the bigger question we should be asking ourselves is why people who had counter claims weren't higher up in the thread. May not be a fault of the community, I'm not sure.

arcticfox 6y ago
Also funny (worrisome?) in retrospect is people that believed the Tweet, thought Apple was behaving fairly, and argued that it simply wasn't a big deal.
- tzs 6y ago
  I don't think that is either funny or worrisome, at least to those somewhat familiar with credit card processing. The way credit card processing fees work is that there are two kinds: 1. Per transaction fees, and 2. Percentage fees. Not all per transaction fees apply to every transaction but if one does it is the same amount on every transaction. Not all percentage fees apply to every transaction, but when they do the amount is a percent of the charge amount, with the percentage the same for every transaction. The big transaction fee is the "authorization fee". For a small merchant this might be $0.25-$0.30. If you are bigger they might give you a lower fee. I work at a company that is small now, but had a brief period of high sales and we were given $0.20 which thankfully has stuck. I've read that this can go as low as maybe $0.15 and perhaps even lower for really big merchants. Another transaction fee is the AVS fee, which is $0.02. You are hit with this on any transaction where you supply address information and ask the card processing system if that matches the on-file information for the card. MasterCard has a $0.0195 fee called the NABU fee, which stands for something like "National Brand Use", which we apparently pay for the privilege of using the name MasterCard. For the percentage fees, there will be a certain base percentage you are always hit with, and then various others that apply to some transactions. For all but very large merchants the base might be around 2% or so. I'm not sure what it is for the very largest. (The above is if you have a merchant account yourself and directly use a payment processor like Authorize.Net or Merchant e-Solutions (MES). If you go through someone one step removed they might simplify it into one fixed fee per transaction plus either a fixed percentage fee or a tiered percentage fee system where a given charge gets one of the tiers. Apple almost certainly does not go through an intermediary like that. They either go through someone like Authorize.Net or MES, or maybe even are big enough to have access at an even lower level). Anyway, the thing about this is that when you process a refund all that is guaranteed is that the credit card user gets their money back. Those fees you paid to have the charge processed? Some of them stick, such as the authorization fee. Furthermore, the refund itself is a transaction that will incur some of the per transaction fees (I don't think it incurs any of the percentage fees but I'm not absolutely certain--credit card processing bills are often extremely confusing and I've never been able to figure out from looking at the bills from at least 5 different processors we've used exactly what fees apply). Assuming that most Apple app sales are $0.99, and taking into account the processing the refund will incur at least some fees, and allowing that Apple certainly gets better rates than I've ever seen, I can still easily believe that the net fees Apple pays on a combined $0.99 charge and $0.99 refund are in the ballpark of $0.30. And since the whole freaking credit card system is set up, or at least appears to be from a merchant's point of view, to make sure that of all the parties involved in a transactions--the customer, the merchant, the merchant bank, the payment processor, the credit card companies, and the issuing bank--it is the merchant that bears the costs when anything happens that is going to cost someone money, nearly everyone who accepts credit cards as payments reacted to the claim that Apple keeps the 30% with "...and in equally unexpected news, the Sun rose this morning".

castratikron 6y ago

Yup. This will make it to n-gate alright.

ptero 6y ago

I think HN works pretty well. Yes, some wrong material may get upvoted to the top of HN, but then it usually gets corrected quickly. In fact, the correction is staying on top of HN longer than original and the comments correcting the error in the original thread have been upvoted, too. That's a pretty efficient way to handle errors. I wish mass media worked the same way. My 2c.

gowld 6y ago

That comment was likely downvoted for toxic tone, and adding no authoritative information..

dang 6y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23996123 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23996123.