5 ms·

I'm curious why this is left up but another post containing a similar link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJeDVgmcKJI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJeDVgmc

I'm curious why this is left up but another post containing a similar link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJeDVgmcKJI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJeDVgmcKJI) was almost immediately removed earlier today. Are political topics allowed/removed based on personal preference?

skrebbel 5y ago
Likely it got flagged too much too quickly. I have no clue how it went down, I'm just a rando HN commenter, but don't ascribe to careless human moderation that which can be adequately explained by automated moderation. There's definitely a sizable crowd that prefers HN to be more about hacking and less about politics, let alone divisive discussions about intelligence services, the person of Glenn Greenwald and so on. Also I wouldn't be surprised if HN has a lower flag->dead threshold for video links.
- trompetenaccoun 5y ago
  So when posts get flagged to much they get auto-removed? If true that seems like a questionable policy. It puts the judgement over right or wrong in the hands of the majority mob, while it's very important for a mind or community to get exposed to contrarian points of view. I'm newish to HN so it's a genuine question, I've not observed enough moderation here to really know how it works. It's the first time I've seen a post disappear and since this is the kind of topic that gets censored on other social media sites it made me suspicious.
  - torstenvl 5y ago
    It puts the judgment over right or wrong for Hacker News in the hands of the majority of people on Hacker News. I'm pretty sure being-on-the-front-page-of-HN is not a measure of moral judgment.
    - trompetenaccoun 5y ago
      Think might be a misunderstanding. I'm referring to a post that got removed, not one that was simply unpopular. There is no issue with the voting mechanism.
      - krapp 5y ago
        Flagging of articles is done by users, not moderators, and it takes very little effort to flag an article, by design. Many people here consider politics categorically off topic (which it really isn't) and will flag such articles on principle.
        trompetenaccoun 5y ago
        Ok, apparently flagging can lead to automatic removal, I understand that now. But how exactly? It's not explained anywhere. How many flags are needed for a submission to get auto-removed? >and it takes very little effort to flag an article, by design. I'm sure I don't have to tell anyone on HN how such a design can be easily abused. A single entity could get undesirable submissions removed by running multiple accounts.
        krapp 5y ago
        >But how exactly? It's not explained anywhere. How many flags are needed for a submission to get auto-removed? Nothing is really removed from HN, only marked invisible. You can see it if you turn the showdead option on in your profile. And you can contact the mods in the email field below but they tend not to give specific details. >A single entity could get undesirable submissions removed by running multiple accounts. Sure, but this forum is so aggressively moderated that it really wouldn't matter. If the mods feel a story doesn't deserve to be flagged, they'll unflag it. If they feel it doesn't deserve to be as popular as it is, they'll sink it. Users will flag and downvote for any number of reasons (since there are no guidelines for voting here.) There are so many invisible strings being pulled on these threads that it's impossible to read any specific motive into anything.
    - 5y ago
  - loopz 5y ago
    HN is pretty selective with what gets scored high and not flagged. Guidelines explain most of it for starters (read links at bottom of HN page): https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html 3 letter agencies can be interesting, though spying is not news in general.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hulitu 5y ago
There are a lot of 3 letter agencies employees employed to sanitize the image of the agencies very active (also) on HN.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  This is absurd. The alleged perpetrators are doing an absolutely terrible job.
  - MichaelMoser123 5y ago
    i am not sure they are doing a bad job, this story was up on the front page for half and hour and then it got flagged.
    - krapp 5y ago
      Hacker News criticizes to outright rants against three letter agencies, governments, the media and the military industrial complex all the time. The fact that we're in such a thread openly discussing a flagged article demonstrates that any attempts to "sanitize" or suppress information aren't really working.
BrianOnHN 5y ago
You can track this here https://upvotetracker.com/ https://upvotetracker.com/
dang 5y ago
Users flagged both of them. If you see an A which goes one way and B which goes another way, don't forget randomness as a possible explanation—it's actually the leading factor. Not all political submissions are off topic on HN, but most are. Many past explanations of how we approach this question are at 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....

skrebbel 5y ago

Likely it got flagged too much too quickly. I have no clue how it went down, I'm just a rando HN commenter, but don't ascribe to careless human moderation that which can be adequately explained by automated moderation. There's definitely a sizable crowd that prefers HN to be more about hacking and less about politics, let alone divisive discussions about intelligence services, the person of Glenn Greenwald and so on. Also I wouldn't be surprised if HN has a lower flag->dead threshold for video links.

trompetenaccoun 5y ago
So when posts get flagged to much they get auto-removed? If true that seems like a questionable policy. It puts the judgement over right or wrong in the hands of the majority mob, while it's very important for a mind or community to get exposed to contrarian points of view. I'm newish to HN so it's a genuine question, I've not observed enough moderation here to really know how it works. It's the first time I've seen a post disappear and since this is the kind of topic that gets censored on other social media sites it made me suspicious.
- torstenvl 5y ago
  It puts the judgment over right or wrong for Hacker News in the hands of the majority of people on Hacker News. I'm pretty sure being-on-the-front-page-of-HN is not a measure of moral judgment.
  - trompetenaccoun 5y ago
    Think might be a misunderstanding. I'm referring to a post that got removed, not one that was simply unpopular. There is no issue with the voting mechanism.
    - krapp 5y ago
      Flagging of articles is done by users, not moderators, and it takes very little effort to flag an article, by design. Many people here consider politics categorically off topic (which it really isn't) and will flag such articles on principle.
      - trompetenaccoun 5y ago
        Ok, apparently flagging can lead to automatic removal, I understand that now. But how exactly? It's not explained anywhere. How many flags are needed for a submission to get auto-removed? >and it takes very little effort to flag an article, by design. I'm sure I don't have to tell anyone on HN how such a design can be easily abused. A single entity could get undesirable submissions removed by running multiple accounts.
        krapp 5y ago
        >But how exactly? It's not explained anywhere. How many flags are needed for a submission to get auto-removed? Nothing is really removed from HN, only marked invisible. You can see it if you turn the showdead option on in your profile. And you can contact the mods in the email field below but they tend not to give specific details. >A single entity could get undesirable submissions removed by running multiple accounts. Sure, but this forum is so aggressively moderated that it really wouldn't matter. If the mods feel a story doesn't deserve to be flagged, they'll unflag it. If they feel it doesn't deserve to be as popular as it is, they'll sink it. Users will flag and downvote for any number of reasons (since there are no guidelines for voting here.) There are so many invisible strings being pulled on these threads that it's impossible to read any specific motive into anything.
  - 5y ago
- loopz 5y ago
  HN is pretty selective with what gets scored high and not flagged. Guidelines explain most of it for starters (read links at bottom of HN page): https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html 3 letter agencies can be interesting, though spying is not news in general.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

hulitu 5y ago

There are a lot of 3 letter agencies employees employed to sanitize the image of the agencies very active (also) on HN.

alisonkisk 5y ago
This is absurd. The alleged perpetrators are doing an absolutely terrible job.
- MichaelMoser123 5y ago
  i am not sure they are doing a bad job, this story was up on the front page for half and hour and then it got flagged.
  - krapp 5y ago
    Hacker News criticizes to outright rants against three letter agencies, governments, the media and the military industrial complex all the time. The fact that we're in such a thread openly discussing a flagged article demonstrates that any attempts to "sanitize" or suppress information aren't really working.

BrianOnHN 5y ago

You can track this here https://upvotetracker.com/ https://upvotetracker.com/

dang 5y ago

Users flagged both of them. If you see an A which goes one way and B which goes another way, don't forget randomness as a possible explanation—it's actually the leading factor. Not all political submissions are off topic on HN, but most are. Many past explanations of how we approach this question are at 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....