5 ms·

[flagged][dead] so I vouched for it. Hope you get some help. I try and keep a spare account going for times like this but it's not always possible or convenient

[flagged][dead] so I vouched for it. Hope you get some help. I try and keep a spare account going for times like this but it's not always possible or convenient.

bowsamic 4y ago
The [flagged] [dead] epidemic on HN seems to be going crazy. The number of well formed opinions I’ve seen recently flagged just because they’re out of the HN ideal is crazy
- slaw 4y ago
  There are also comments that disapper, yet still visible at user's comments history.
  - Cpoll 4y ago
    Is that different than 'dead' comments (only visible if 'showdead: yes' in settings)?
    - slaw 4y ago
      These comments are not visible with showdead:yes. They are detached from article.
      - dahart 4y ago
        The difference between flagged-dead items and detached items is that flagging is done by the community for any reason, while detaching is done by moderators to fix specific problems. Flagging might be gamed but usually isn’t from what I’ve seen, and HN actively tries to detect gaming. OTOH, moderation is always done manually and thoughtfully. (And, most importantly, there is a human who will listen to appeals about either.)
  - daedalus_f 4y ago
    Interesting, I've not read about that on the various lists of HN undocumented features like [1], not that that means it does not happen. Do you have an example? [1] https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#second-chance-pool https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#second...
    - slaw 4y ago
      See my reply to comment about Estonia.
      - daedalus_f 4y ago
        I can see that users comments both when I go from their comments list and also when I go directly to the posts comment section. Is there something I am missing? It doesn’t seem to be downvoted or dead and has multiple replies.
  - swayvil 4y ago
    Thay call that "shadow removal" in redditland. From the perpective of the guy who posted it, everything's kosher, just nobody's replying for some reason. From the perspective of everyone else in the forum there's no post. Ostensibly a way of managing spam while depriving the spammer of informative feedback. In practice a method of censorship with extra "screw you" on top.
    - slaw 4y ago
      HN censors heavily politics, economy and covid. See my comment about Estonia. I was shadow banned on Electrec, Tesla fan forum. My comments were visible when I was logged in, but gone when not logged.
      - swayvil 4y ago
        HN censors unpopular opinions too. Some of us express our disagreement with a reply by downvoting and flagging. HN responds to that by rendering your reply progressively invisible. Throttling your speech. Shadow removal. And shadow ban. (While avoiding responsibility for the censorship, if you see what I mean)
        charcircuit 4y ago
        Throttling comes with your comments also being deranked. I wish the throttling error would at least tell you when you are able to post again.
        swayvil 4y ago
        Zero explanation appears to be the popular policy with all of our social media overlords.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      'shadow banning' is just another method of avoiding responsebility and scrutiny, and stifling dissent. Goes with the times. Just like not exaplaining reasons for banning what's app account, makin vague TOS, keeping salaries secret, it's the antithesys of a fair and just society.
- jsnell 4y ago
  This is not a support forum for tech companies. There is nothing interesting about or surprising about this event, and no discussion to be had on this subject that hasn't been already had on HN a hundred times this year. All this does is push some worthy content off the front-page. If anything is an epidemic, it's posts like this one. Sure, each of them has a small chance of being useful to a single individual. At the same time, it's reducing the usefulness of this site for tens or hundreds of thousands. And the more they're encouraged with upvoting and vouching, the more of them will be posted.
  - monkey_monkey 4y ago
    Actually posts like this are very useful - the more of them they are, the higher the chance that something will actually change. I'm tired of billion dollar companies that have achieved their scale by literally hooking us on their free services and have zero interest in us as real people, and then don't give a flying fuck if their shitty automated processes decide to unperson someone.
    - abnercoimbre 4y ago
      Is this realistically now a problem for regulators (FTC, FCC, etc.) or does our industry stand a chance of correcting itself?
      - monkey_monkey 4y ago
        I think it will have to be forced on them by external regulators.
      - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        I think the big mistake is in people thinking events have a single cause and in reality events can have dozens of contributory factors, most of them often invisivle
        abnercoimbre 4y ago
- United857 4y ago
  Ironic that comments are false-positive banned in a discussion about false-positive banning.
tempestn 4y ago
Appreciate it. It's not the end of the world as she wasn't using it for anything critical; she could get a new phone number, but not sure it's worth the hassle of juggling two numbers or devices just for whatsapp, nor is it worth changing her phone number for everything else. So if it's not reversed she'll probably just live with missing out on those chats.
- hiccuphippo 4y ago
  If you get a phone with 2 sim cards you can use one only for WhatsApp and the other for everything else. I was even able to use WhatsApp while abroad and my sim card not working for a month, it might be only needed for setting up WhatsApp once at the start and then swap the card.
  - abofh 4y ago
    You only need to be able to receive an SMS for setup - I ported my cell number to twilio long ago for spam prevention purposes, but can still use whatsapp / signal.
- pdksam 4y ago
  Or maybe she can get a new number just for registering on whatsapp and keep the sim around if she needs to re-register. I don't belive I have ever had to re-register unless I changed devices. Although, I think that might be circumventing the ban and should be pretty trivial to detect and might get banned again.
sva_ 4y ago
Maybe someone needs to build flaggeddeadyc.com that has a list of recent posts that had a number of votes but got nuked, because I noticed this increasingly being a problem as well. I feel like on some posts the flagging is abused to block stuff that might otherwise be interesting to some people.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- leereeves 4y ago
  You can actually see dead posts right here on HN. Just click your username in the orange bar, then change "showdead".

[flagged][dead] so I vouched for it. Hope you get some help. I try and keep a spare account going for times like this but it's not always possible or convenient.

bowsamic 4y ago

The [flagged] [dead] epidemic on HN seems to be going crazy. The number of well formed opinions I’ve seen recently flagged just because they’re out of the HN ideal is crazy

slaw 4y ago
There are also comments that disapper, yet still visible at user's comments history.
- Cpoll 4y ago
  Is that different than 'dead' comments (only visible if 'showdead: yes' in settings)?
  - slaw 4y ago
    These comments are not visible with showdead:yes. They are detached from article.
    - dahart 4y ago
      The difference between flagged-dead items and detached items is that flagging is done by the community for any reason, while detaching is done by moderators to fix specific problems. Flagging might be gamed but usually isn’t from what I’ve seen, and HN actively tries to detect gaming. OTOH, moderation is always done manually and thoughtfully. (And, most importantly, there is a human who will listen to appeals about either.)
- daedalus_f 4y ago
  Interesting, I've not read about that on the various lists of HN undocumented features like [1], not that that means it does not happen. Do you have an example? [1] https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#second-chance-pool https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#second...
  - slaw 4y ago
    See my reply to comment about Estonia.
    - daedalus_f 4y ago
      I can see that users comments both when I go from their comments list and also when I go directly to the posts comment section. Is there something I am missing? It doesn’t seem to be downvoted or dead and has multiple replies.
- swayvil 4y ago
  Thay call that "shadow removal" in redditland. From the perpective of the guy who posted it, everything's kosher, just nobody's replying for some reason. From the perspective of everyone else in the forum there's no post. Ostensibly a way of managing spam while depriving the spammer of informative feedback. In practice a method of censorship with extra "screw you" on top.
  - slaw 4y ago
    HN censors heavily politics, economy and covid. See my comment about Estonia. I was shadow banned on Electrec, Tesla fan forum. My comments were visible when I was logged in, but gone when not logged.
    - swayvil 4y ago
      HN censors unpopular opinions too. Some of us express our disagreement with a reply by downvoting and flagging. HN responds to that by rendering your reply progressively invisible. Throttling your speech. Shadow removal. And shadow ban. (While avoiding responsibility for the censorship, if you see what I mean)
      - charcircuit 4y ago
        Throttling comes with your comments also being deranked. I wish the throttling error would at least tell you when you are able to post again.
        swayvil 4y ago
        Zero explanation appears to be the popular policy with all of our social media overlords.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    'shadow banning' is just another method of avoiding responsebility and scrutiny, and stifling dissent. Goes with the times. Just like not exaplaining reasons for banning what's app account, makin vague TOS, keeping salaries secret, it's the antithesys of a fair and just society.
jsnell 4y ago
This is not a support forum for tech companies. There is nothing interesting about or surprising about this event, and no discussion to be had on this subject that hasn't been already had on HN a hundred times this year. All this does is push some worthy content off the front-page. If anything is an epidemic, it's posts like this one. Sure, each of them has a small chance of being useful to a single individual. At the same time, it's reducing the usefulness of this site for tens or hundreds of thousands. And the more they're encouraged with upvoting and vouching, the more of them will be posted.
- monkey_monkey 4y ago
  Actually posts like this are very useful - the more of them they are, the higher the chance that something will actually change. I'm tired of billion dollar companies that have achieved their scale by literally hooking us on their free services and have zero interest in us as real people, and then don't give a flying fuck if their shitty automated processes decide to unperson someone.
  - abnercoimbre 4y ago
    Is this realistically now a problem for regulators (FTC, FCC, etc.) or does our industry stand a chance of correcting itself?
    - monkey_monkey 4y ago
      I think it will have to be forced on them by external regulators.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      I think the big mistake is in people thinking events have a single cause and in reality events can have dozens of contributory factors, most of them often invisivle
      - abnercoimbre 4y ago
United857 4y ago
Ironic that comments are false-positive banned in a discussion about false-positive banning.

tempestn 4y ago

Appreciate it. It's not the end of the world as she wasn't using it for anything critical; she could get a new phone number, but not sure it's worth the hassle of juggling two numbers or devices just for whatsapp, nor is it worth changing her phone number for everything else. So if it's not reversed she'll probably just live with missing out on those chats.

hiccuphippo 4y ago
If you get a phone with 2 sim cards you can use one only for WhatsApp and the other for everything else. I was even able to use WhatsApp while abroad and my sim card not working for a month, it might be only needed for setting up WhatsApp once at the start and then swap the card.
- abofh 4y ago
  You only need to be able to receive an SMS for setup - I ported my cell number to twilio long ago for spam prevention purposes, but can still use whatsapp / signal.
pdksam 4y ago
Or maybe she can get a new number just for registering on whatsapp and keep the sim around if she needs to re-register. I don't belive I have ever had to re-register unless I changed devices. Although, I think that might be circumventing the ban and should be pretty trivial to detect and might get banned again.

sva_ 4y ago

Maybe someone needs to build flaggeddeadyc.com that has a list of recent posts that had a number of votes but got nuked, because I noticed this increasingly being a problem as well. I feel like on some posts the flagging is abused to block stuff that might otherwise be interesting to some people.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
leereeves 4y ago
You can actually see dead posts right here on HN. Just click your username in the orange bar, then change "showdead".