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Of my past 10 posts on HN 6 have been flagged and removed by users. Of those, many made it to the front page with 10+ votes. I contacted Dang and he was clear

Of my past 10 posts on HN 6 have been flagged and removed by users. Of those, many made it to the front page with 10+ votes. I contacted Dang and he was clear it was users censoring it, further that some users were also "vouching" for my posts. It's to the point, people don't want to know. I feel I'm fairly even handed in my discussion. Here's a couple of my posts (who knows if I'll get flagged): - Public Safety Announcement: The 2020 Election is Not Over (https://austingwalters.com/public-safety-announcement-the-2020-election-is-not-over-as-of-nov-11-2020/ https://austingwalters.com/public-safety-announcement-the-20...) - Firearms by the Numbers (https://austingwalters.com/firearms-by-the-numbers/ https://austingwalters.com/firearms-by-the-numbers/) - Update: The Dead Vote In Michigan – Voter Database Being Modified (https://austingwalters.com/update-the-dead-vote-in-michigan/ https://austingwalters.com/update-the-dead-vote-in-michigan/) NOTE: I make no real claims in there, simply state the counter argument to the main media narrative. I have a blog post itself there. I'm SERIOUSLY concerned about the fact both sides of the political spectrum have no idea what the other is claiming. I'm desperately trying to get my social circle to understand.

ericsoderstrom 6y ago
From the HN guidelines: > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. I think these examples you cited are pretty clearly off topic
snazz 6y ago
Politics is generally off-topic here other than in a few specific posts that are explicitly allowed because they're so newsworthy, like the death of RBG and the media calling the election.
- cryptica 6y ago
  I think the fact that politics can't be discussed here is itself a form of censorship. Because people are not able to freely exchange ideas about politics, you end up with silos. The main reason why the subject of politics causes flame wars is because people are thinking about it emotionally because they have very little actual information to work with. The less sharing of information there is on the subject, the more divided people are going to be.
  - hmry 6y ago
    There are valid reasons for limiting which topics people can discuss in a space, in my opinion. If I disallow people from discussing politics on my cooking forum that's not censorship. It's keeping the discussion focused on the actual topic. HN seems to take a middle ground position of allowing politics when they are relevant to the topic, but not otherwise. That is also what I promote on all platforms I moderate.
  - astura 6y ago
    There's a million places to discuss politics online if you want to.
  - chippy 6y ago
    Politics can be discussed here. It's that most users don't want to discuss it. They know that most political discussions turn into flame wars and they would rather not have HN be a place of flame.
  - bluntfang 6y ago
    Yes, Hacker News is censored by the owner. There is no question about that. If you are anti-censorship, this is not the place for you.
  - dang 6y ago
    It's not the case that politics can't be discussed here. Many HN stories have political overlap. At the same time, we can't allow all political posts and we have to moderate flamewars, or HN will turn into a political site, which is against its mandate (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). I've written about this many times: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=political%20overlap%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... These explanations have become pretty stable by now, so I think they answer the question pretty completely. Some good threads to start with might be https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902396. If anyone has a better idea about how we should approach this, I'd love to hear it. But please make sure that you've familiarized yourself with the previous explanations first and understand the constraints we're subject to. If it's something simple like "just ban politics" or "just allow everything", I've already answered many times why that won't work.
Dirlewanger 6y ago
It's hopeless here. Any perceived criticism of Biden/Democratic Party is instantly downvoted/flagged. It's sad to see how far HN has fallen.
- Craighead 6y ago
  You should read the rules
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
tolbish 6y ago
You are getting flagged for posting off topic, not because of any kind of political censorship. There are subreddits for the kind of posts you're submitting.
rbanffy 6y ago
> both sides of the political spectrum have no idea what the other is claiming. I'm not sure that's true. As your post about Michigan voter database points out, one side is making up facts they themselves don't believe in order to push the perception the results are invalid. The objective is not to reverse the results, which it's very unlikely they'll be able to do, but to use the perception to justify moves you allude to on the first post. All in all, this is dangerous territory here in HN, as most of the debates around these end up in shouting matches. Presenting multiple sides of an argument is only productive if all sides are engaging the debate honestly.
- lawnchair_larry 6y ago
  This is incorrect and illustrates the parent’s point. There is a sincerely held belief that a subset of the people who had the means, motive, and opportunity to influence the results in key districts may have succumbed to the temptation. This is actually the more rational position as far as I can tell. So, a lot of people are looking at anything that may prove or disprove this. This is in no way unlike what the democrats do. It’s still a common belief that the 2000 election was stolen, and academics were analyzing it even years after. Also, Trump lost by fewer votes than Abrams did, and that’s still a conspiracy theory in the left. It seems odd to me that so many folks on the left don’t realize how similar they are. Are you engaging honestly? Or are you just assuming bad faith? The dangerous territory is acting as though legitimate questions and inquiry is dangerous territory. Many of us in tech have had election security concerns for like a decade. We set up voting machines for kids to hack at defcon. Of course, there are loud Q anon types on twitter throwing out all kinds of crap. Most of them are actually sincere as well, even though we know better and it seems silly. But those voices aren’t representative of the legitimate concerns. I asked my wife, who hates Trump, if she was tasked with reporting a vote total in a crucial district, and she had the opportunity to plausibly fudge the numbers such that it would change the outcome, would she “do the right thing” and save us from another 4 years of Trump? She said yes without hesitation. Somehow, I don’t think she is the only person who thinks that way. That doesn’t mean that someone cheated, but only a fool would take their word for it. With so much on the line, it’s in everyone’s best interest to get more certainty. We already know that voter fraud happens routinely, and even enough to swing elections. Especially in Philadelphia. We also know that humans make mistakes. In most elections, mistakes are a rounding error that is below the noise floor. In a tight race, a few mistakes can change the outcome. You’re better off letting them look and find nothing than shout them down and say “nothing to see here!”. As part of this process, a lot of irregularities are going to be found that appear suspicious, and most are going to have benign explanations after they are investigated. That doesn’t make it bad faith. They have already found several errors and thousands of ballots on memory cards that they “forgot” to upload. Ensuring that these were isolated incidents only makes sense.
forest_dweller 6y ago
People seem to conflate understanding an opponents argument with accepting the opponents argument.
gruez 6y ago
>NOTE: I make no real claims in there, simply state the counter argument to the main media narrative You claim that, and you might be acting in good faith, but enough bad faith actors have used the "I'm just asking questions" excuse that any fringe/conspiratorial material is assumed to be bad faith, and therefore flagged.
somesortofsystm 6y ago
Want to get censored on HN? Try to discuss America's war crimes, or its contributions to the Yemen genocide, in any HN thread where such discussions are actually relevant. This is a case where the evidence is clear and available to anyone who cares to find it, but the society is unprepared and unwilling to allow the discussion to be had. The most effective way to get a subject ignored by any particular society is to promote the collective will into self-censoring in its sphere.
- s5300 6y ago
  Have you ever considered that what you're posting/discussing may not be found to follow the posting guidelines of this forum by some majority of it's users and they're simply trying to tell you that by using the built in feature to do so? If you haven't in a bit, please re-read the guidelines.
  - somesortofsystm 6y ago
    I've read the guidelines, but I'm pretty sure that American warfighting is relevant to HN. Especially apropos the info-/bigdata- sphere. But okay, lets forget the subject and never mention it again.
- ccmcarey 6y ago
  You are incorrect. The reason those subjects are largely not discussed here is because this is not the place for discussions such as those. It's like going to a bird watching event and complaining that they don't respond when you try to argue political points. It's just not an appropriate discussion.
  - somesortofsystm 6y ago
    I can think of hundreds of examples of HN-appropriate discussions involving privacy, the NSA, military technology, Big Data and the military, where it was strictly verboten to bring up the ongoing wars, which are still very relevant to the HN readership. But sure, there are other places to discuss war crimes.
bluntfang 6y ago
Why isn't this post removed for meta discussion?

ericsoderstrom 6y ago

From the HN guidelines: > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. I think these examples you cited are pretty clearly off topic

snazz 6y ago

Politics is generally off-topic here other than in a few specific posts that are explicitly allowed because they're so newsworthy, like the death of RBG and the media calling the election.

cryptica 6y ago
I think the fact that politics can't be discussed here is itself a form of censorship. Because people are not able to freely exchange ideas about politics, you end up with silos. The main reason why the subject of politics causes flame wars is because people are thinking about it emotionally because they have very little actual information to work with. The less sharing of information there is on the subject, the more divided people are going to be.
- hmry 6y ago
  There are valid reasons for limiting which topics people can discuss in a space, in my opinion. If I disallow people from discussing politics on my cooking forum that's not censorship. It's keeping the discussion focused on the actual topic. HN seems to take a middle ground position of allowing politics when they are relevant to the topic, but not otherwise. That is also what I promote on all platforms I moderate.
- astura 6y ago
  There's a million places to discuss politics online if you want to.
- chippy 6y ago
  Politics can be discussed here. It's that most users don't want to discuss it. They know that most political discussions turn into flame wars and they would rather not have HN be a place of flame.
- bluntfang 6y ago
  Yes, Hacker News is censored by the owner. There is no question about that. If you are anti-censorship, this is not the place for you.
- dang 6y ago
  It's not the case that politics can't be discussed here. Many HN stories have political overlap. At the same time, we can't allow all political posts and we have to moderate flamewars, or HN will turn into a political site, which is against its mandate (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). I've written about this many times: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=political%20overlap%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... These explanations have become pretty stable by now, so I think they answer the question pretty completely. Some good threads to start with might be https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902396. If anyone has a better idea about how we should approach this, I'd love to hear it. But please make sure that you've familiarized yourself with the previous explanations first and understand the constraints we're subject to. If it's something simple like "just ban politics" or "just allow everything", I've already answered many times why that won't work.

Dirlewanger 6y ago

It's hopeless here. Any perceived criticism of Biden/Democratic Party is instantly downvoted/flagged. It's sad to see how far HN has fallen.

Craighead 6y ago
You should read the rules
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

tolbish 6y ago

You are getting flagged for posting off topic, not because of any kind of political censorship. There are subreddits for the kind of posts you're submitting.

rbanffy 6y ago

> both sides of the political spectrum have no idea what the other is claiming. I'm not sure that's true. As your post about Michigan voter database points out, one side is making up facts they themselves don't believe in order to push the perception the results are invalid. The objective is not to reverse the results, which it's very unlikely they'll be able to do, but to use the perception to justify moves you allude to on the first post. All in all, this is dangerous territory here in HN, as most of the debates around these end up in shouting matches. Presenting multiple sides of an argument is only productive if all sides are engaging the debate honestly.

lawnchair_larry 6y ago
This is incorrect and illustrates the parent’s point. There is a sincerely held belief that a subset of the people who had the means, motive, and opportunity to influence the results in key districts may have succumbed to the temptation. This is actually the more rational position as far as I can tell. So, a lot of people are looking at anything that may prove or disprove this. This is in no way unlike what the democrats do. It’s still a common belief that the 2000 election was stolen, and academics were analyzing it even years after. Also, Trump lost by fewer votes than Abrams did, and that’s still a conspiracy theory in the left. It seems odd to me that so many folks on the left don’t realize how similar they are. Are you engaging honestly? Or are you just assuming bad faith? The dangerous territory is acting as though legitimate questions and inquiry is dangerous territory. Many of us in tech have had election security concerns for like a decade. We set up voting machines for kids to hack at defcon. Of course, there are loud Q anon types on twitter throwing out all kinds of crap. Most of them are actually sincere as well, even though we know better and it seems silly. But those voices aren’t representative of the legitimate concerns. I asked my wife, who hates Trump, if she was tasked with reporting a vote total in a crucial district, and she had the opportunity to plausibly fudge the numbers such that it would change the outcome, would she “do the right thing” and save us from another 4 years of Trump? She said yes without hesitation. Somehow, I don’t think she is the only person who thinks that way. That doesn’t mean that someone cheated, but only a fool would take their word for it. With so much on the line, it’s in everyone’s best interest to get more certainty. We already know that voter fraud happens routinely, and even enough to swing elections. Especially in Philadelphia. We also know that humans make mistakes. In most elections, mistakes are a rounding error that is below the noise floor. In a tight race, a few mistakes can change the outcome. You’re better off letting them look and find nothing than shout them down and say “nothing to see here!”. As part of this process, a lot of irregularities are going to be found that appear suspicious, and most are going to have benign explanations after they are investigated. That doesn’t make it bad faith. They have already found several errors and thousands of ballots on memory cards that they “forgot” to upload. Ensuring that these were isolated incidents only makes sense.

forest_dweller 6y ago

People seem to conflate understanding an opponents argument with accepting the opponents argument.

gruez 6y ago

>NOTE: I make no real claims in there, simply state the counter argument to the main media narrative You claim that, and you might be acting in good faith, but enough bad faith actors have used the "I'm just asking questions" excuse that any fringe/conspiratorial material is assumed to be bad faith, and therefore flagged.

somesortofsystm 6y ago

Want to get censored on HN? Try to discuss America's war crimes, or its contributions to the Yemen genocide, in any HN thread where such discussions are actually relevant. This is a case where the evidence is clear and available to anyone who cares to find it, but the society is unprepared and unwilling to allow the discussion to be had. The most effective way to get a subject ignored by any particular society is to promote the collective will into self-censoring in its sphere.

s5300 6y ago
Have you ever considered that what you're posting/discussing may not be found to follow the posting guidelines of this forum by some majority of it's users and they're simply trying to tell you that by using the built in feature to do so? If you haven't in a bit, please re-read the guidelines.
- somesortofsystm 6y ago
  I've read the guidelines, but I'm pretty sure that American warfighting is relevant to HN. Especially apropos the info-/bigdata- sphere. But okay, lets forget the subject and never mention it again.
ccmcarey 6y ago
You are incorrect. The reason those subjects are largely not discussed here is because this is not the place for discussions such as those. It's like going to a bird watching event and complaining that they don't respond when you try to argue political points. It's just not an appropriate discussion.
- somesortofsystm 6y ago
  I can think of hundreds of examples of HN-appropriate discussions involving privacy, the NSA, military technology, Big Data and the military, where it was strictly verboten to bring up the ongoing wars, which are still very relevant to the HN readership. But sure, there are other places to discuss war crimes.

bluntfang 6y ago

Why isn't this post removed for meta discussion?