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I've a good example for you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16576569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16576569 , and https://news.ycombinator.com/it

I've a good example for you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16576569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16576569 , and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16578715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16578715 Both these posts reached front page, with lively and active discussions. Both were quickly flagged. I would have some difficulty thinking of a more important topic. This post on it was also flagged, then unflagged once it would never reach front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16579219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16579219 Dang's comment was that the links "didn't fit site guidelines". This is despite the fact that people clearly found the story important, interesting, and were having constructive discussion about it. Posts about this censorship quickly rose, attracted discussion, and were then flagged and deleted. Posters were banned. What other stories are treated like this? How would we even know? If this post somehow reached front page, I'd expect it to be flagged too; as off-topic, or too meta, or against site guidelines. People would pop up like clockwork to defend the decision, praise the site's moderation, etc.

krapp 5y ago
You can have a forum for "lively and active" discussion or you can have a forum for curated, high-quality discussion. You can't have both, and to have the latter you need aggressive moderation. And the bigger and more diverse the userbase gets, the more aggressive the moderation has to be to prevent Eternal September from eating everything. Its either that or ban all accounts made after, say, 2015 and have membership be invite only as Lobste.rs does. I can understand the opposition to this - i've clashed with the mods, been flagged and slowbanned, I get downvoted to oblivion every time I give an opinion that goes against the zeitgeist of a thread - but Hacker News is what it is. If you want to discuss CIA torture, this isn't the proper venue. But if you want to color outside the guidelines, you have to realize you've become the problem that this culture wants to rid itself of, and eventually it will. And to answer the dead comment below: a lot more political stories probably need to be flagged here than are - I think the bar for "interesting new phenomenon" needs to be a bit higher. I don't see the value in threads about the withdrawal from Afghanistan, for instance. It's a worthwhile news story, but the threads are generating more smoke and heat then light.
- whatev84583 5y ago
  I'm sorry, I can't see how the first part of your comment is responsive to the comment you're replying to. > If you want to discuss CIA torture, this isn't the proper venue. OK. But it is the proper venue to have a group moan and hand-wringing session about impending climate disaster a few times a week? > if you want to color outside the guidelines, you have to realize you've become the problem that this culture wants to rid itself of I think this is actually a great way of stating my point (no sarcasm): that HN is a curated echo chamber, which is very different from what it claims to be.
- mandmandam 5y ago
  The question was, are there off limit topics here and active censorship of such; I think we both agree that there is. Second; CIA torture is American torture. It's important to discuss it, here and elsewhere, until it stops. But it's an off-limit topic. Not cool. Many other people who voted the story to the top three times in one hour agree that it's worth discussing here, and they voted the story about its removal to the top as well. You may feel this isn't the proper venue, and dang may feel that way too. But there's no evidence that's the majority view; in fact there's quite a lot of evidence to the contrary.
  - krapp 5y ago
    >Second; CIA torture is American torture. It's important to discuss it, here and elsewhere, until it stops. But it's an off-limit topic. Not cool. The purpose of this forum is to gratify intellectual curiosity. Righteous, even justifiable, anger about American war crimes or anything else doesn't satisfy that goal. Most political threads don't lead to any insights, rather they tend to degenerate into cynical piss-takes and partisan rancor. That may satisfy the impotent rage one feels about an unjust world or grant an endorphine hit by dunking on one's ideological enemies, but as far as content goes, they're usually an intellectual wasteland. Hacker News isn't going to solve the world's problems. This is mostly a place for bored tech nerds to waste time avoiding the real world. If you want speech to lead to practical results, get involved in political activism. >You may feel this isn't the proper venue, and dang may feel that way too. But there's no evidence that's the majority view; in fact there's quite a lot of evidence to the contrary. For better or worse (I think it's both,) the majority doesn't rule here. Hacker News isn't a democracy, it's an oligarchy - rule by elites. The majority getting what it wants is practically the definition of Eternal September. That's why downvotes and flags are weighted more heavily than upvotes, so the few can override the will of the many. And when the elite minority gets it wrong, the mods step in and start turning knobs.
Tomte 5y ago
> I would have some difficulty thinking of a more important topic. That doesn't matter. HN isn't for everything, no matter how important that thing may be. Flagging a story doesn't mean "I think it's unimportant", it means "it doesn't belong here".
- whatev84583 5y ago
  > Flagging a story doesn't mean "I think it's unimportant", it means "it doesn't belong here". That might be what flagging is supposed to mean, but that's not the reality. For example, climate doom apparently "belongs" on HN. But submit something that suggests that climate doomsday might not actually be imminent and watch it be anonymously flagged (i.e. hidden and all ongoing conversations obstructed) with no explanation or justification.
- mandmandam 5y ago
  Whoever flagged that story didn't make a good case for doing so in the comments (nor have you). Many people commented on why that story was important, and of interest to the tech community. As I've pointed out, the story was upvoted to the front page, and removed, three times in an hour. That all shows the story was clearly of interest to the community, but overruled by a very small number of people who decided they know better. While some people can apparently argue that helping to censor discussion of war crimes is good for this forum, against the expressed will of this forum, it's telling that no debate or discussion was allowed.
  - Tomte 5y ago
    > didn't make a good case for doing so in the comments (nor have you). Pay me. > why that story was important, and of interest to the tech community. Neither matters. Set up your own forum and do it your style.
    - mandmandam 5y ago
      > Pay me. I'm genuinely not interested in your take. > Neither matters. Set up your own forum and do it your style. OP asked for evidence of censorship and "wrong viewpoints"; I gave it.

krapp 5y ago

You can have a forum for "lively and active" discussion or you can have a forum for curated, high-quality discussion. You can't have both, and to have the latter you need aggressive moderation. And the bigger and more diverse the userbase gets, the more aggressive the moderation has to be to prevent Eternal September from eating everything. Its either that or ban all accounts made after, say, 2015 and have membership be invite only as Lobste.rs does. I can understand the opposition to this - i've clashed with the mods, been flagged and slowbanned, I get downvoted to oblivion every time I give an opinion that goes against the zeitgeist of a thread - but Hacker News is what it is. If you want to discuss CIA torture, this isn't the proper venue. But if you want to color outside the guidelines, you have to realize you've become the problem that this culture wants to rid itself of, and eventually it will. And to answer the dead comment below: a lot more political stories probably need to be flagged here than are - I think the bar for "interesting new phenomenon" needs to be a bit higher. I don't see the value in threads about the withdrawal from Afghanistan, for instance. It's a worthwhile news story, but the threads are generating more smoke and heat then light.

whatev84583 5y ago
I'm sorry, I can't see how the first part of your comment is responsive to the comment you're replying to. > If you want to discuss CIA torture, this isn't the proper venue. OK. But it is the proper venue to have a group moan and hand-wringing session about impending climate disaster a few times a week? > if you want to color outside the guidelines, you have to realize you've become the problem that this culture wants to rid itself of I think this is actually a great way of stating my point (no sarcasm): that HN is a curated echo chamber, which is very different from what it claims to be.
mandmandam 5y ago
The question was, are there off limit topics here and active censorship of such; I think we both agree that there is. Second; CIA torture is American torture. It's important to discuss it, here and elsewhere, until it stops. But it's an off-limit topic. Not cool. Many other people who voted the story to the top three times in one hour agree that it's worth discussing here, and they voted the story about its removal to the top as well. You may feel this isn't the proper venue, and dang may feel that way too. But there's no evidence that's the majority view; in fact there's quite a lot of evidence to the contrary.
- krapp 5y ago
  >Second; CIA torture is American torture. It's important to discuss it, here and elsewhere, until it stops. But it's an off-limit topic. Not cool. The purpose of this forum is to gratify intellectual curiosity. Righteous, even justifiable, anger about American war crimes or anything else doesn't satisfy that goal. Most political threads don't lead to any insights, rather they tend to degenerate into cynical piss-takes and partisan rancor. That may satisfy the impotent rage one feels about an unjust world or grant an endorphine hit by dunking on one's ideological enemies, but as far as content goes, they're usually an intellectual wasteland. Hacker News isn't going to solve the world's problems. This is mostly a place for bored tech nerds to waste time avoiding the real world. If you want speech to lead to practical results, get involved in political activism. >You may feel this isn't the proper venue, and dang may feel that way too. But there's no evidence that's the majority view; in fact there's quite a lot of evidence to the contrary. For better or worse (I think it's both,) the majority doesn't rule here. Hacker News isn't a democracy, it's an oligarchy - rule by elites. The majority getting what it wants is practically the definition of Eternal September. That's why downvotes and flags are weighted more heavily than upvotes, so the few can override the will of the many. And when the elite minority gets it wrong, the mods step in and start turning knobs.

Tomte 5y ago

> I would have some difficulty thinking of a more important topic. That doesn't matter. HN isn't for everything, no matter how important that thing may be. Flagging a story doesn't mean "I think it's unimportant", it means "it doesn't belong here".

whatev84583 5y ago
> Flagging a story doesn't mean "I think it's unimportant", it means "it doesn't belong here". That might be what flagging is supposed to mean, but that's not the reality. For example, climate doom apparently "belongs" on HN. But submit something that suggests that climate doomsday might not actually be imminent and watch it be anonymously flagged (i.e. hidden and all ongoing conversations obstructed) with no explanation or justification.
mandmandam 5y ago
Whoever flagged that story didn't make a good case for doing so in the comments (nor have you). Many people commented on why that story was important, and of interest to the tech community. As I've pointed out, the story was upvoted to the front page, and removed, three times in an hour. That all shows the story was clearly of interest to the community, but overruled by a very small number of people who decided they know better. While some people can apparently argue that helping to censor discussion of war crimes is good for this forum, against the expressed will of this forum, it's telling that no debate or discussion was allowed.
- Tomte 5y ago
  > didn't make a good case for doing so in the comments (nor have you). Pay me. > why that story was important, and of interest to the tech community. Neither matters. Set up your own forum and do it your style.
  - mandmandam 5y ago
    > Pay me. I'm genuinely not interested in your take. > Neither matters. Set up your own forum and do it your style. OP asked for evidence of censorship and "wrong viewpoints"; I gave it.