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I think a topic can be extremely sensitive and still be discussed on HN as long as it fits a certain accepted narrative. The worry is this asymmetry.

• labrador 4y ago
  > I think a topic can be extremely sensitive and still be discussed on HN I don't agree. All it takes is 4 people to downvote and flag you and you're dead
  • bombcar 4y ago
    • walterbell 4y ago
      Narrative acceptability changes over time, partly due to narratives being debated here and elsewhere. HN debate on sensitive topics is possible, but like any contested space, it requires more care and effort.
      • soheil 4y ago
        > Narrative acceptability changes over time, partly due to narratives being debated here Circular logic. What cannot be debated in the first place can never change to become an acceptable narrative at least not here.
        • walterbell 4y ago
          The second sentence is a statement about activity on this site. If a story or comment is flagged incorrectly, you can email the mods. I have participated in HN debates where a comment goes through several rounds of negative and positive upvotes. > HN debate on sensitive topics is possible, but like any contested space, it requires more care and effort.
  • paulpauper 4y ago
    Enough consecutive downvotes to make the score to go to -4.
    • labrador 4y ago
      I didn't realize this but it would be easy to get around with alt accounts
      • pclmulqdq 4y ago
        I assume that the HN mod team (or maybe just dang) can find out if you are doing this. The HN submission algorithm is very sensitive to small numbers of upvotes early on in a submission's life. Using a few alt accounts to boost your posts would have an outsized effect here.
        • soheil 4y ago
          Not sure why only a few alt accounts instead of perhaps thousands would be used by someone who would want to influence what topics get discussed and what don't. Also not difficult to use a reverse exponential decay function to modulate votes.
          • Eisenstein 4y ago
            How does one get a few thousand accounts with more than the karma limit needed to be able to downvote?
            • soheil 4y ago
              Auto submit tech news articles periodiclly?
          • pclmulqdq 4y ago
            I think they look for cliques in the graph of people who upvote certain content. Even with "natural" vote times, you may get caught doing this over and over. This is one of the ways that Reddit and Twitter search for bots too.
  • soheil 4y ago
    While others can vouch for you to resurrect you from death
    • labrador 4y ago
      That's never happened to me. Once I'm dead I'm dead. I sometimes get my satisfaction later on, for example when Bitcoin was popular on HN I was one of the few people early on to call it a waste of electricity. Now that's not so controversial.
      • soheil 4y ago
        But the vouch button does exist, I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't work for vast majority of dead comments, since they probably wouldn't be dead in the first place if enough people upvoted them.
        • labrador 4y ago
          I guess I don't have enough karma to have a vouch link. The comment by bombcar in this thread is dead and there's no vouch on it.
          • grzm 4y ago
            I think you need to click on the comment timestamp to view the comment in isolation for "vouch" to appear.
            • labrador 4y ago
              Ok, now I see it. Thanks, learn something new every day
      • curmudgeon22 4y ago
        Vouching does rely on someone to take the extra effort relative to a downvote, so I think it's safe to assume vouching is more rare.
      • deleted 4y ago