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I'm sorry but HN has gotten really toxic over the years. Flagging and censorship is a big concern here as there is an asymmetric balance of power that is clearl

by f430 6y ago

I'm sorry but HN has gotten really toxic over the years. Flagging and censorship is a big concern here as there is an asymmetric balance of power that is clearly being abused. Somebody doesn't agree with me politically? flagged & downvoted. Somebody is a potential competitor? flagged & downvoted. Somebody drives a Ferrari and I don't? flagged, downvoted (recently, somebody on HN tried to doxx me with no moderator taking action) I miss the days when there were really good discussions, while those are still around, HN increasingly feels like a competition of "I am smart because X so Y". There appears to be a cabal especially around specific topics like Bitcoin or their affiliated companies. edit: heh case in point. now all of my other comments are being brigaded & downvoted. Lots of bitterness and negative vibes here that is only going to impede growth. I will pray for you.

fortran77 6y ago
There's also a lot of "brigading" -- mass flags and downvoting of everything an individual has posted or commented on.
- f430 6y ago
  Yes, there is sometimes an excessive pedantry that is used to attack an FOSS or some new project on Show HN or new thoughts. It's impossible to placate this small group, they decide what gets upvoted and what doesn't. It is the same problem on Reddit too. Anybody can create multiple accounts or buy aged ones, use different proxies to downvote. On the server side, what can you really do to fight this? Fingerprinting, IP address intelligence, account age, points, user activity that will be compared to the normal distribution of most legitimate user activity (I doubt this is used efficiently). edit: Case example, within minutes of posting my parent comment, its downvoted to oblivion and they are probably going through all of my comment history to do the same. It's really churlish and parochial.
  - joshmanders 6y ago
    Maybe requiring a comment to downvote? Like you click the downvote and instead of it actually downvoting, it attaches the downvote to the comment box and requires you to leave a reply justifying your downvote.

by f430 6y ago

fortran77 6y ago

There's also a lot of "brigading" -- mass flags and downvoting of everything an individual has posted or commented on.

f430 6y ago
Yes, there is sometimes an excessive pedantry that is used to attack an FOSS or some new project on Show HN or new thoughts. It's impossible to placate this small group, they decide what gets upvoted and what doesn't. It is the same problem on Reddit too. Anybody can create multiple accounts or buy aged ones, use different proxies to downvote. On the server side, what can you really do to fight this? Fingerprinting, IP address intelligence, account age, points, user activity that will be compared to the normal distribution of most legitimate user activity (I doubt this is used efficiently). edit: Case example, within minutes of posting my parent comment, its downvoted to oblivion and they are probably going through all of my comment history to do the same. It's really churlish and parochial.
- joshmanders 6y ago
  Maybe requiring a comment to downvote? Like you click the downvote and instead of it actually downvoting, it attaches the downvote to the comment box and requires you to leave a reply justifying your downvote.