5 ms·

Unless you're suggesting some kind of conspiracy, the author most likely changed their mind and deleted it from their substack...

shafyy 6y ago
The author removed it from Substack (see my edit) - but still it got flagged down on here.
- hndude 6y ago
  It's funny to me that PG's staunchest supporters are likely the antithesis of what he espouses as the true hacker -- bootlickers who believe that his wealth and/or knowledge and/or business success make him far superior to others. So superior, in fact, that he is beyond reproach.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    I'm not a supporter of Paul Graham at all, and I'd have flagged this story instantaneously if I'd seen it.
    - hndude 6y ago
      Having just read the earlier article about him, that's totally fair. That first one is a much more substantive (IMO) and scholarly scathing takedown of PG. This one is certainly more personal and political in nature.
- cactus2093 6y ago
  Is there any reason to think it was flagged by moderators? It wasn't removed from the site prior to the author deleting it. It seems more likely it was flagged by users or just downvoted. In which case what would you suggest, should the mods make special rules that boost content critical of HN, rather than just letting the user votes and flagging play out?
baron_harkonnen 6y ago
I don't think you have to suggest conspiracy here. Any frequent reader of HN will know that HN is pretty aggressive with censoring posts that don't fit with the overall ideology here, no matter how up-voted the content is. I used to play a game with myself at predicting which posts I would see in the morning would be removed with in 30 minutes. My favorite example was an article on how important it is to openly talk about the impacts and causes of climate change. It made it to the FP, had lots of discussion and was removed within 30 minutes. Posts that are likewise seriously critical of the startup world get remove very quickly. In this particular case I don't think this post is necessarily being censored, but HN does do this very frequently so it's not a crazy question to ask.
- exolymph 6y ago
  This is probably in response to user flagging.
  - baron_harkonnen 6y ago
    I have no doubt, that's after all how ideology works. Have a small group of users trained to rapidly flag content that goes against a certain perspective allows a minority of opinion to have control over this community while at the same time allowing the moderators to wash their hands of everything.
- sneak 6y ago
  I created https://orangesite.sneak.cloud https://orangesite.sneak.cloud to track such things, as some things that make the front page that are off topic to HN are nonetheless interesting to me/good links. A lot of what gets modded is total crap, though, and is low-quality in addition to simply being off topic. Source here: https://git.eeqj.de/sneak/orangesite https://git.eeqj.de/sneak/orangesite
  - nosmokewhereiam 6y ago
    I appreciate this, it's a cool concept I haven't seen before. Does this exist for other sites, like reddit?

shafyy 6y ago

The author removed it from Substack (see my edit) - but still it got flagged down on here.

hndude 6y ago
It's funny to me that PG's staunchest supporters are likely the antithesis of what he espouses as the true hacker -- bootlickers who believe that his wealth and/or knowledge and/or business success make him far superior to others. So superior, in fact, that he is beyond reproach.
- tptacek 6y ago
  I'm not a supporter of Paul Graham at all, and I'd have flagged this story instantaneously if I'd seen it.
  - hndude 6y ago
    Having just read the earlier article about him, that's totally fair. That first one is a much more substantive (IMO) and scholarly scathing takedown of PG. This one is certainly more personal and political in nature.
cactus2093 6y ago
Is there any reason to think it was flagged by moderators? It wasn't removed from the site prior to the author deleting it. It seems more likely it was flagged by users or just downvoted. In which case what would you suggest, should the mods make special rules that boost content critical of HN, rather than just letting the user votes and flagging play out?

baron_harkonnen 6y ago

I don't think you have to suggest conspiracy here. Any frequent reader of HN will know that HN is pretty aggressive with censoring posts that don't fit with the overall ideology here, no matter how up-voted the content is. I used to play a game with myself at predicting which posts I would see in the morning would be removed with in 30 minutes. My favorite example was an article on how important it is to openly talk about the impacts and causes of climate change. It made it to the FP, had lots of discussion and was removed within 30 minutes. Posts that are likewise seriously critical of the startup world get remove very quickly. In this particular case I don't think this post is necessarily being censored, but HN does do this very frequently so it's not a crazy question to ask.

exolymph 6y ago
This is probably in response to user flagging.
- baron_harkonnen 6y ago
  I have no doubt, that's after all how ideology works. Have a small group of users trained to rapidly flag content that goes against a certain perspective allows a minority of opinion to have control over this community while at the same time allowing the moderators to wash their hands of everything.
sneak 6y ago
I created https://orangesite.sneak.cloud https://orangesite.sneak.cloud to track such things, as some things that make the front page that are off topic to HN are nonetheless interesting to me/good links. A lot of what gets modded is total crap, though, and is low-quality in addition to simply being off topic. Source here: https://git.eeqj.de/sneak/orangesite https://git.eeqj.de/sneak/orangesite
- nosmokewhereiam 6y ago
  I appreciate this, it's a cool concept I haven't seen before. Does this exist for other sites, like reddit?