7 ms·
HN is also penalising threads that discuss this. This post has 74 upvotes in 27 minutes and 11 comments at time of writing. Ordinarily it would significantly ou
by phpnode 6y ago
HN is also penalising threads that discuss this. This post has 74 upvotes in 27 minutes and 11 comments at time of writing. Ordinarily it would significantly outrank most of the other posts on the front page, but it doesn't seem to be able to break past #15. Either this is because HN users are flagging it, or because something else is going on. As Reddit is a YC company it'd be really nice to hear an explanation.
This exact same thing happened with the previous threads
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26554697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26554697
and
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26556187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26556187
There are some awful transphobic comments in those threads, but they appeared _after_ the threads had been penalised.
- geoah 6y agoHN users are flagging it, checkout the previous threads for more comments on why.
- Black101 6y agoHN appears to do some shady stuff too... sometimes it is users flagging post (like a mega-downvote) and sometimes it is the admins controlling the speech. I'm not sure why HN needs flagging and down-votes... because flagging is being abused all the time (and I think that some users get super-heavy-flagging-powers, a bit like low level admins).
- ramphastidae 6y agoFlagging is the least bad system I’ve seen so far. HN can be configured to show flagged or dead posts as well so it doesn’t really compare.
- Black101 6y agoDoes the admin(s) need to do anything to hide a post when a post has been flagged by users or it is automatically hidden?
- ohyeshedid 6y agoIt's automatically hidden.
- greenyoda 6y agoIt's automatic. If enough users flag a post, it gets "killed" and will only show up (with the tag "[flagged][dead]") if you have the "showdead" option enabled in your profile.
- mhh__ 6y agoI don't think it's an awful system but I don't think it's exactly right for HN - in normal operations it works fairly well but when combined with some less desirable HN stereotypes it can just involve shutting down discussion one disagrees with (e.g. merely mentioning Donald Trump by name was an insta flag during the election, but you could always get away with worse if you talked about democrats because the average user is further right than most forums)
- dec0dedab0de 6y agoI think most of us automatically downvote or flag anything political regardless of personal politics. Especially US presidential politics, because that's what the uninteresting parts of the internet are for.
- Black101 6y agoIt is completely false that a bias doesn't come into play with political content. It is not necessarily a bad thing, but some users appear to have been given more power and can shut down those articles more quickly.
- Steko 6y agoThe least bad system is far more transparent.
- underseacables 6y agoI’ve always wanted to see on HN a public audit trail of all moderator modified, or removed posts and comments. That would give greater transparency and might prevent moderators enforcing their own beliefs and norms. Then again the counter argument, or point, is that HN won’t do that because it could open mods to greater pressure, unless it’s actually corporate policy to control the narrative. Any other reasons why HN wouldn’t publish a public audit trail?
- ohyeshedid 6y agoWithout all the information you're still left with a lot of mystery. I might ban an account, for seemingly nothing, because I can see they've created 15 accounts in the last two days to troll and stir shit up. Partial information seems to create as many, if not more, conspiracies than no information. Moderating large social systems is tricky.
- underseacables 6y agoI think any action done can be noted to that effect, but a step towards transparency should be a goal, because over time and interaction that “mystery” cold be solved. Wikipedia records all changes for review, with such an erudite crowd behind HN, it would seem trivial to establish such a system.
- kmonsen 6y agoIsn't this orthogonal to anything about that persons gender status? It should be possible to have a discuss and ban any comments that would normally be banned around gender status or more specific around this persons gender status? Are we not capable of having a reasonable discussion around a person and their actions just because of this?
- phpnode 6y agoYeah it's nothing to do with their gender status, but someone reading those threads now might draw the conclusion that the stories were flagged or penalised due to the transphobia, which is not the case - the penalty came before the hate.
- jandrese 6y agoHN's moderation system is rather susceptible to brigading. Downvotes will flow like water to certain topics, regardless of the quality of the original post or the discussion therein. Bots have effective veto power over every story.
- twirlock 6y agoWow Dan, way to punch up on behalf of the little guy, like always. Good old Punchin' Up Dan, using censorship, e.g. shadowbanning, to aid the oppressed. Selfless altruism incarnate.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> HN is also penalising threads that discuss this. Yes, HN tends to punish more-heat-than-light topics that overlap with perennial divise political/culture war issues.
- Karawebnetwork 6y agoI think many people don't care about Reddit at all and perceive these discussions as off topic and uninteresting. There are better spaces to discuss those, such as /r/SubredditDrama/. If this were a new article on the subject, it might fit. But links to Reddit threads while the drama is happening live? To me, that's gossip. Edit: Disclaimer because that's how it is on the internet, I am transgender. Yet I have never heard of this person before and only learned their gender identity in the comments here. I don't care about Reddit or UK Politics.
- phpnode 6y agoPerhaps, but I'm surprised given the level of influence Reddit has these days. Reddit reaches about 500 million people per month, probably more. It's not "just a silly message board" anymore. They have a comparatively tiny number of employees and those people have a very real power to control narratives. We're seeing just the tiniest glimpse of that here because the employee in question has done so in an incredibly egregious manner. The question this whole incident should raise is "what else is going on, that we haven't yet seen?". The specifics of this particular example are uninteresting.
- jennyther 6y agoNot least, this is a site wide action by the staff without regard to subreddit mods. And it's been done without any transparency at all. That is telling in a larger sphere, even if the details might not be so interesting.
- Redoubts 6y agoThis is absolutely the case.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago> There are better spaces to discuss those, such as /r/SubredditDrama/. But see, we can't discuss this there.
- deleted 6y ago
- Macha 6y agoHN penalises threads that are "too active", as potential flame wars and downranks them automatically. There's also user flagging. I don't think it indicates that HN is specifically taking action against this thread because of who it's about, just the usual automated mechanisms.
- 9387367 6y agoThis thread has more votes (454 points) than any on the front page apart from number 1 (540 points) with more comments, 205 vs 118 from the top post. As of now, it seats on the second page at #44.
- onewhonknocks 6y agoNow at #93.
- 9387367 6y agoPerhaps HN should look into the weight of flagging, judging by #votes, seems like their ranking is not working or perhaps it is and they are happy this is not the top post. Quite ironical, regardless as Reddit is a YC startup, none the less Paul Graham is the ideator and the post is about paid Reddit staff silencing users. Edit: Now at 114 on the 4th page...
- frogpelt 6y agoIf you're trying to create a discussion community where the least desirable outcome is controversial discussions/flame wars, high weight on flagging seems to be a good way to do it. Of course, people flagging it might be thinking all kinds of things like "Why would a topic about what Reddit does be important here?"
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- felipelemos 6y ago#128 for me now
- dencodev 6y agoIt's currently flagged and not visible at all
- anton96 6y ago
- BlargMcLarg 6y agoI mean, just look at how emotionally charged the top comment threads have become after this got posted. It isn't exactly a topic that can be discussed when so many people can't hold themselves to the basic rules (be nice and polite, attack the idea not the person, etc.) and things devolve to "you're a bigot! / no, I'm not a bigot!".
- hoseja 6y agoThis thread has now been disappeared from the frontpage as well.
- felipelemos 6y ago5th page now.
- jader201 6y agoOh wow, and now it’s flagged. If there are Reddit employees on HN that, for example, would cause threads like this to get buried, that should be looked into.
- hfktk4nrn 6y agoWhat do you think is the probability of dang not being aware of this third post today on this issue? He certainly can unflag it and lock it that way if he wished.
- s9w 6y agohe's a tranny, no wonder there's drama
- dang 6y agoUsers are flagging them. The only thing moderators have done is decline to turn off the flags. We turn off flags sometimes when (a) the article contains significant new information (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22significant%20new%20information%22%20by%3Adang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...) and (b) it can support a substantive HN discussion. Neither of those seems true here so I don't think it's a hard call. There have been countless threads on the generic topic here (free speech online, let's call it) and the details of this particular story seem very specific to Reddit drama, indeed (not that I've looked closely) to some specific subreddit. If so, that's neither an interesting new phenomenon nor gratifying of intellectual curiosity (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), so it's not on topic for HN and users have been right to flag these.
- phpnode 6y agoif there's an interesting conversation to be had it's about governance and transparency in how online spaces are moderated, given the depth of their influence, the broadness of their reach and the relative power wielded by those who control the platform (hello there!). Unfortunately that conversation is mostly absent from these threads.
- dang 6y agoThat conversation in general has been and continues to be had over and over again on HN, so even if this is a good occasion for substantive discussion (which I doubt), it's not as if there won't be countless opportunities in the future.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ric2b 6y agoThe fact that this is being done to cover up the past of a specific person who's an employee of reddit strikes me as novel, weren't the previous examples about much more general topics like covid denial?