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Unbelievable. The next time another reactionary outrage-bait piece from Quillette or Unherd or Matt Taibbi or the National Review worms its way to the front pag

Unbelievable. The next time another reactionary outrage-bait piece from Quillette or Unherd or Matt Taibbi or the National Review worms its way to the front page are you going to swap out its url for a totally different article on a totally different website only nominally on the same topic? The point of the original article wasn’t just that people misunderstand section 230, it’s that republican politicians are conducting a propaganda campaign to willfully misrepresent section 230–and every thread on HN where someone launches into that tired and fallacious “publisher vs platform” spiel is evidence that it’s working. Facts aren’t inherently clickbait just because they displease the conservative HN massive.

dang 6y ago
I respect how strongly you feel about this. I don't think the situation is as you describe it though. Basically everyone with strong political convictions is furious at HN for being outrageously (as they feel) slanted toward the opposing side. But it simply is not so. I suppose this is a consequence of the "if you're not for us you're against us" mentality, which is the essential political stance, though growing in intensity lately. The reason we do these sorts of edits is not driven by politics but by the attempt to optimize HN for curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). The principles of how we do that have been worked out over the years, and they're not derived from political positions. Curiosity likes to cut across such boundaries—being limited by boundaries is not in its nature. I get that above a certain threshold of political passion, the feeling becomes that the site ought not to be optimized for curiosity, but rather for political justice or some value like that. That's understandable—those are also good values. HN would just be a totally different kind of site if we did that. The question then is whether a site dedicated to curiosity has the right to exist on the web or not—including under current political conditions. I think it does. Why shouldn't it?
- iron0013 6y ago
  That’s great, but it didn’t answer the question. Next time “passionate” supporters of racism post an anti-affirmative action screed, or “passionate” supporters of the “anti cancel culture” movement post some incoherent mess about how they should be allowed to say repulsive things but no one should be allowed to talk back to them, or “passionate” supporters of the president post a link to a tabloid story containing some barely-above-Q-level conspiracy theory targeting the president’s enemies, are you going to replace the links to these stories with more “neutral” sources like you’ve or here? Because you haven’t in the past.
  - dang 6y ago
    I tried to answer your question by explaining how its premise is untrue, but perhaps that wasn't clear enough. If you're asking me whether we do the same kind of moderation on baity right-wing sources, the answer is of course, we do that all the time. If you're asking whether we'll do that on every future article that you might see as opposing your political beliefs, probably not. How we make these calls depends on the article. For sure we make some of them wrong, but you seem to want us to change the entire system by which we make them, and I've explained above why that would be bad. The main thing, though, is that your question doesn't feel like a question. To me it feels like you're trying to conscript me into political battle for a position I don't occupy to begin with. HN commenters who feel strongly on any topic (not just politics) sometimes make stories in which, for whatever reason, I, or rather "dang", gets cast as the enemy. That's a job hazard and inevitable, but those stories are not mine and that's not me.

dang 6y ago

I respect how strongly you feel about this. I don't think the situation is as you describe it though. Basically everyone with strong political convictions is furious at HN for being outrageously (as they feel) slanted toward the opposing side. But it simply is not so. I suppose this is a consequence of the "if you're not for us you're against us" mentality, which is the essential political stance, though growing in intensity lately. The reason we do these sorts of edits is not driven by politics but by the attempt to optimize HN for curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). The principles of how we do that have been worked out over the years, and they're not derived from political positions. Curiosity likes to cut across such boundaries—being limited by boundaries is not in its nature. I get that above a certain threshold of political passion, the feeling becomes that the site ought not to be optimized for curiosity, but rather for political justice or some value like that. That's understandable—those are also good values. HN would just be a totally different kind of site if we did that. The question then is whether a site dedicated to curiosity has the right to exist on the web or not—including under current political conditions. I think it does. Why shouldn't it?

iron0013 6y ago
That’s great, but it didn’t answer the question. Next time “passionate” supporters of racism post an anti-affirmative action screed, or “passionate” supporters of the “anti cancel culture” movement post some incoherent mess about how they should be allowed to say repulsive things but no one should be allowed to talk back to them, or “passionate” supporters of the president post a link to a tabloid story containing some barely-above-Q-level conspiracy theory targeting the president’s enemies, are you going to replace the links to these stories with more “neutral” sources like you’ve or here? Because you haven’t in the past.
- dang 6y ago
  I tried to answer your question by explaining how its premise is untrue, but perhaps that wasn't clear enough. If you're asking me whether we do the same kind of moderation on baity right-wing sources, the answer is of course, we do that all the time. If you're asking whether we'll do that on every future article that you might see as opposing your political beliefs, probably not. How we make these calls depends on the article. For sure we make some of them wrong, but you seem to want us to change the entire system by which we make them, and I've explained above why that would be bad. The main thing, though, is that your question doesn't feel like a question. To me it feels like you're trying to conscript me into political battle for a position I don't occupy to begin with. HN commenters who feel strongly on any topic (not just politics) sometimes make stories in which, for whatever reason, I, or rather "dang", gets cast as the enemy. That's a job hazard and inevitable, but those stories are not mine and that's not me.