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The one you are commenting on is a good start for considering what is at stake. The comments posted on HN are not moderated prior to appearing in a thread. Kee

The one you are commenting on is a good start for considering what is at stake. The comments posted on HN are not moderated prior to appearing in a thread. Keep in mind that the bar that has been set here is that an account's second post (the first being made a long time ago, and the account since sitting idle) contained a bomb threat that users reported and mods reviewed before it was taken down within 20 minutes. Go ahead and try it. Make a new account on HN and do the same. If said comment lasts more than 20 minutes, HN would fall afoul of this new unofficial guideline.

alphabettsy 4y ago
This is a false equivalence. HN ostensibly exist for discussion about tech and that’s reflected by the vast majority of the content, a significant portion of content of KF is unsavory or worse.
- jimmydorry 4y ago
  There are plenty of examples of reddit doing the same to subreddits they didn't agree with. Take /r/the_donald for example. They cheered for "their guy" non-stop for years, but were not doing anything illegal or morally unsavory. Low and behold, out of the blue a few accounts posted threats against police officers (the sub overwhelmingly espousing "Blue Lives Matter" at the time amongst the backdrop of other subs espousing "Black Lives Matter") and that was enough to close the sub down. If you set the bar low enough, it doesn't matter what the platform's content is oriented towards, and while HackerNews may not be in the firing line right now, who's to say that it will forever remain off the radar? If we are fine setting the bar towards a platform being responsible for all user generated content in real-time, just know that this puts niche communities like HN at-risk.
  - alphabettsy 4y ago
    Your interpretation of events regarding /r/the_donald and it’s content are quite a mischaracterization from what I recall. Bigotry, racial slurs and calls for violence were thinly veiled with euphemisms to avoid breaking sub and Reddit rules. Threats against police I don’t recall being part of it at all. I don’t buy the slippery slope argument.
    - jimmydorry 4y ago
      I simplified the timeline of events as the point of the comment was to show that platforms can be targetted for being distasteful, even if their content is not centered around breaking laws, doxing, etc. Racism and calls for violence were never allowed on t_d and were removed on report / were downvoted heavily. T_d was allowed to persist for as long as it did precisely because it didn't violate any site rules, even though the reddit leadership really hated it.
ethanbond 4y ago
I didn’t argue that content needs to be checked prior to being posted? Right, HN doesn’t do that but actually ends up with very effective moderation. HN’s moderation, I’ll add, would probably be considered heavy-handed by the HN crowd if it were applied anywhere else except their favorite country club (that is, HN). Threads are regularly nuked for just having the wrong tone, and this is a good thing! HN is a great place to be due to the combination of levers HN the service and HN the community deploy. KF: None of this is true. My understanding is that KF has had this problem for years and has directly (as in, named specifically by victims) been involved with several suicides due to massive online and real-life harassment campaigns.
- jimmydorry 4y ago
  >I didn’t argue that content needs to be checked prior to being posted? That is what you are arguing for. The GP said the best parts of the internet are at stake and you dismissed that off-hand by implying that the communities you participate in can either exceed the timeliness of KF's moderation, or less charitibly, there are no parts of the internet worth saving. Dang runs a tight ship, but make no mistake that Dang and team relies just as much on user reports as other sites do. And it is impossible to moderate new users / posts within minutes of creation. On KF, harassment in meatspace was not only against the rules (threads removed, perpetrators banned), but against the site culture. Instigators were called out and made fun of. Doxing and making mean threads about people is certainly distasteful, but until legislation catches up, this activity is unfortunately not illegal and not isolated to KF. Your understand of KF is either biased by people with a vested stake in taking down KF, or mis-informed. Others in these threads have gone through KF's "side of the story", which makes the entire situation complicated and not a clear black-and-white case. From what I understand, there has only been one alleged suicide tied to KF. I use the word alleged because said suicide has not to date been confirmed by authorities (Japanese or American), and the supposed victim has gone radio silent in the past. If a platform (even a supposed hateful one), can only be tied to a single suicide, how is that even comparable to the unimaginable number of suicides tied to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Telegram, Discord, etc.? Make no mistake, I think KF is a vile place and don't support them in the least... but we must be cognisant of what exactly is at stake if we set impossible bars for moderation. We also do not know exactly what incident in particular caused CloudFlare to about-face walk back the policy they communicated just days before later blocking KF. We can only guess that it was related to the bomb threat made by a user that was immediately taken down (sub 20min), but was still weaponised by the crowd attempting to cancel CloudFlare over their inaction.

alphabettsy 4y ago

This is a false equivalence. HN ostensibly exist for discussion about tech and that’s reflected by the vast majority of the content, a significant portion of content of KF is unsavory or worse.

jimmydorry 4y ago
There are plenty of examples of reddit doing the same to subreddits they didn't agree with. Take /r/the_donald for example. They cheered for "their guy" non-stop for years, but were not doing anything illegal or morally unsavory. Low and behold, out of the blue a few accounts posted threats against police officers (the sub overwhelmingly espousing "Blue Lives Matter" at the time amongst the backdrop of other subs espousing "Black Lives Matter") and that was enough to close the sub down. If you set the bar low enough, it doesn't matter what the platform's content is oriented towards, and while HackerNews may not be in the firing line right now, who's to say that it will forever remain off the radar? If we are fine setting the bar towards a platform being responsible for all user generated content in real-time, just know that this puts niche communities like HN at-risk.
- alphabettsy 4y ago
  Your interpretation of events regarding /r/the_donald and it’s content are quite a mischaracterization from what I recall. Bigotry, racial slurs and calls for violence were thinly veiled with euphemisms to avoid breaking sub and Reddit rules. Threats against police I don’t recall being part of it at all. I don’t buy the slippery slope argument.
  - jimmydorry 4y ago
    I simplified the timeline of events as the point of the comment was to show that platforms can be targetted for being distasteful, even if their content is not centered around breaking laws, doxing, etc. Racism and calls for violence were never allowed on t_d and were removed on report / were downvoted heavily. T_d was allowed to persist for as long as it did precisely because it didn't violate any site rules, even though the reddit leadership really hated it.

ethanbond 4y ago

I didn’t argue that content needs to be checked prior to being posted? Right, HN doesn’t do that but actually ends up with very effective moderation. HN’s moderation, I’ll add, would probably be considered heavy-handed by the HN crowd if it were applied anywhere else except their favorite country club (that is, HN). Threads are regularly nuked for just having the wrong tone, and this is a good thing! HN is a great place to be due to the combination of levers HN the service and HN the community deploy. KF: None of this is true. My understanding is that KF has had this problem for years and has directly (as in, named specifically by victims) been involved with several suicides due to massive online and real-life harassment campaigns.

jimmydorry 4y ago
>I didn’t argue that content needs to be checked prior to being posted? That is what you are arguing for. The GP said the best parts of the internet are at stake and you dismissed that off-hand by implying that the communities you participate in can either exceed the timeliness of KF's moderation, or less charitibly, there are no parts of the internet worth saving. Dang runs a tight ship, but make no mistake that Dang and team relies just as much on user reports as other sites do. And it is impossible to moderate new users / posts within minutes of creation. On KF, harassment in meatspace was not only against the rules (threads removed, perpetrators banned), but against the site culture. Instigators were called out and made fun of. Doxing and making mean threads about people is certainly distasteful, but until legislation catches up, this activity is unfortunately not illegal and not isolated to KF. Your understand of KF is either biased by people with a vested stake in taking down KF, or mis-informed. Others in these threads have gone through KF's "side of the story", which makes the entire situation complicated and not a clear black-and-white case. From what I understand, there has only been one alleged suicide tied to KF. I use the word alleged because said suicide has not to date been confirmed by authorities (Japanese or American), and the supposed victim has gone radio silent in the past. If a platform (even a supposed hateful one), can only be tied to a single suicide, how is that even comparable to the unimaginable number of suicides tied to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Telegram, Discord, etc.? Make no mistake, I think KF is a vile place and don't support them in the least... but we must be cognisant of what exactly is at stake if we set impossible bars for moderation. We also do not know exactly what incident in particular caused CloudFlare to about-face walk back the policy they communicated just days before later blocking KF. We can only guess that it was related to the bomb threat made by a user that was immediately taken down (sub 20min), but was still weaponised by the crowd attempting to cancel CloudFlare over their inaction.