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HN people are very much for censoring ideas they don’t like too. You could get banned last year for grumping too much about the COVID vaccines.

walterbell 5y ago
Do you have an example? Contested topics can be flagged by users, but it's possible to appeal to HN moderators. Has anyone been banned from HN for a topic? Over the last couple of years, HN has been one of the few places where debate was even possible.
- swamp40 5y ago
  The site doesn't ban, the users gang downvote you into oblivion for political views unpopular with west coast liberal values. Oh well - 95% of posts aren't political anyway. And other than that, the discussions are fantastic.
happytoexplain 5y ago
Mostly only for certain definitions of "grumping" that are poisonous to substantive conversation. I find on HN that [user] moderation is largely irrelevant to the subject, which is a small miracle even despite its imperfect application.
dang 5y ago
We don't ban people for that sort of reason. Comments like this need to come with links so people can make up their own minds.
- lyingliar 5y ago
  Oh another gross lie among the very many you've told
  - dang 5y ago
    > Comments like this need to come with links so people can make up their own minds.
    - WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
      Are you being a weasel about the word "ban"? Do you place users in a special status where their comments are hidden by default and they are subject to strict rate limits based on things they say? Yes, of course. And I can't link people to examples, because HN hides the comments in question from everyone but me. You know that.
      - dang 5y ago
        We generally tell people we're banning them and why, but there are two major exceptions: spammers and serial trolls. By serial troll I mean someone who we banned at least once already and who shows up again and again with new accounts to break the site guidelines, knowing perfectly well what they're doing. When people do that, it no longer makes sense to post a "we're banning you" comment every time—they've already made quite clear that they don't want to use HN as intended. Your account, if I'm not mistaken, is very much in the latter category. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, you've done it dozens of times by now. That's why we shadowban the new ones. None of this is new (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20shadowban&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), and you guys aren't likely to get very far with the community about this.
        WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
        > Your account, if I'm not mistaken, is very much in the latter category. You should be glad that someone cares enough to keep trying to administer medicine. The people who just went away when you made it clear that you were going to persistently treat them unfairly, they just consider you and other users unredeemable, lost, that trying to help you wasn't worth their time. It wouldn't be a good thing for you to actually win against the "serial trolls". Unenviable position, yours.
l-_l-_l-_lo_ol 5y ago
The recent Joe Rogan extravaganza brought this all out as well. I know nothing about virology. I listened to that controversial virologist on his podcast and still know so little. But then on HN it seems there are apparently numerous experts on the subject, or so they think, who are dead sure censoring of the dangerous Dr. Malone is necessary. It seemed every bit as tribal as twitter, but with a better vocabulary.
- dang 5y ago
  That's to be expected with any divisive topic on the internet, which that one certainly is. > It seemed every bit as tribal as twitter The active ingredient there is the word 'seemed'. If you look closer and deeper, you'll see that HN is an experiment in a completely different sort of site—not just from Twitter, but from all the other major ones. This is partly because of the values it was founded with*, but equally because of the initial conditions of its design—primarily the fact that it's non-siloed, meaning there are no follow lists or social graphs or any of the other devices that online communities use to partition themselves. That has profound effects. I've written about this many times. The most in-depth attempt was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098. There are others at https://hn.algolia.com/?query=silo%20by%3Adang&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=silo%20by%3Adang&dateRange=all... * Primarily intellectual curiosity. Note: when I say HN was founded on that value I am not saying that it always, or even mostly, lives up to it. Just that it's in the DNA and that makes a difference.
- mojzu 5y ago
  Science vs. did a good episode on why that episode was dangerous bullshit, and unlike Rogan they cite sources/talk to experts in the field That's not to say laypeople shouldn't be able to interview potentially controversial subjects, but to my mind preventing a celebrity from using their platform to spread information when they're not doing any good faith investigation as to whether that information is accurate is not equivalent to censorship
  - DeusExMachina 5y ago

walterbell 5y ago

Do you have an example? Contested topics can be flagged by users, but it's possible to appeal to HN moderators. Has anyone been banned from HN for a topic? Over the last couple of years, HN has been one of the few places where debate was even possible.

swamp40 5y ago
The site doesn't ban, the users gang downvote you into oblivion for political views unpopular with west coast liberal values. Oh well - 95% of posts aren't political anyway. And other than that, the discussions are fantastic.

happytoexplain 5y ago

Mostly only for certain definitions of "grumping" that are poisonous to substantive conversation. I find on HN that [user] moderation is largely irrelevant to the subject, which is a small miracle even despite its imperfect application.

dang 5y ago

We don't ban people for that sort of reason. Comments like this need to come with links so people can make up their own minds.

lyingliar 5y ago
Oh another gross lie among the very many you've told
- dang 5y ago
  > Comments like this need to come with links so people can make up their own minds.
  - WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
    Are you being a weasel about the word "ban"? Do you place users in a special status where their comments are hidden by default and they are subject to strict rate limits based on things they say? Yes, of course. And I can't link people to examples, because HN hides the comments in question from everyone but me. You know that.
    - dang 5y ago
      We generally tell people we're banning them and why, but there are two major exceptions: spammers and serial trolls. By serial troll I mean someone who we banned at least once already and who shows up again and again with new accounts to break the site guidelines, knowing perfectly well what they're doing. When people do that, it no longer makes sense to post a "we're banning you" comment every time—they've already made quite clear that they don't want to use HN as intended. Your account, if I'm not mistaken, is very much in the latter category. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, you've done it dozens of times by now. That's why we shadowban the new ones. None of this is new (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20shadowban&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), and you guys aren't likely to get very far with the community about this.
      - WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
        > Your account, if I'm not mistaken, is very much in the latter category. You should be glad that someone cares enough to keep trying to administer medicine. The people who just went away when you made it clear that you were going to persistently treat them unfairly, they just consider you and other users unredeemable, lost, that trying to help you wasn't worth their time. It wouldn't be a good thing for you to actually win against the "serial trolls". Unenviable position, yours.

l-_l-_l-_lo_ol 5y ago

The recent Joe Rogan extravaganza brought this all out as well. I know nothing about virology. I listened to that controversial virologist on his podcast and still know so little. But then on HN it seems there are apparently numerous experts on the subject, or so they think, who are dead sure censoring of the dangerous Dr. Malone is necessary. It seemed every bit as tribal as twitter, but with a better vocabulary.

dang 5y ago
That's to be expected with any divisive topic on the internet, which that one certainly is. > It seemed every bit as tribal as twitter The active ingredient there is the word 'seemed'. If you look closer and deeper, you'll see that HN is an experiment in a completely different sort of site—not just from Twitter, but from all the other major ones. This is partly because of the values it was founded with*, but equally because of the initial conditions of its design—primarily the fact that it's non-siloed, meaning there are no follow lists or social graphs or any of the other devices that online communities use to partition themselves. That has profound effects. I've written about this many times. The most in-depth attempt was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098. There are others at https://hn.algolia.com/?query=silo%20by%3Adang&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=silo%20by%3Adang&dateRange=all... * Primarily intellectual curiosity. Note: when I say HN was founded on that value I am not saying that it always, or even mostly, lives up to it. Just that it's in the DNA and that makes a difference.
mojzu 5y ago
Science vs. did a good episode on why that episode was dangerous bullshit, and unlike Rogan they cite sources/talk to experts in the field That's not to say laypeople shouldn't be able to interview potentially controversial subjects, but to my mind preventing a celebrity from using their platform to spread information when they're not doing any good faith investigation as to whether that information is accurate is not equivalent to censorship
- DeusExMachina 5y ago