5 ms·
Ask HN: Can we have a 30 day moratorium on Musk/Twitter posts?
I don't think we need a front-page story on every rumor or every tweet he makes, and for some reason commentators on these stories can't seem to follow the guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
Most of the "breaking news" stories have turned out to be false anyways. Nobody's intellectual curiosity is being satiated by this nonsense.
I propose a 30 day cooling off period. There are other outlets (e.g. Twitter) for folks who really want up-to-the-second news about Twitter.
- Nicksil 4y agoYes, please. My god.
- PaulHoule 4y agoHuh? I see one article about Twitter on the front page right now and one article that might be tangentially related. New is getting spammed with that stuff but not a lot is floating to the top. It’s like that quote from the movie The China Syndrome: “the system worked”
- Nicksil 4y ago>Huh? I see one article about Twitter on the front page right now and one article that might be tangentially related. New is getting spammed with that stuff but not a lot is floating to the top. It’s like that quote from the movie The China Syndrome: “the system worked” Can't tell if you're just having a go or not, but it's been awful around here the last couple weeks or so. - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=twitter&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=musk&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... Insanity, actually. This is what insane people do.
- PaulHoule 4y agoI see a lot of submissions that get a few votes and then disappear. If you hate it go submit 20 articles about something else, just not all at the same time.
- Nicksil 4y ago>I see a lot of submissions that get a few votes and then disappear. If you hate it go submit 20 articles about something else, just not all at the same time. That would be contributing to something I'm clearly opposed to. Besides, you can't look at the frequency of posts concerning Twitter, Elon Musk, and the like, the last weeks and honestly say that thing's are normal. It'd be one thing if these posts actually contributed something new and noteworthy, but the overwhelming majority are either a low-quality regurgitation of some random individual's contempt or re-posts just minutes or hours apart.
- version_five 4y agoSaw this mentioned earlier today. They are rightfully being downweighted as long as they don't actually contain anything materially new: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33507986#33509084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33507986#33509084
- allears 4y agoTwitter is a major social media platform. It not only affects social media users, it also shapes our politics and our society, like it or not (I don't). The current shitshow may be tiresome to read about, and I'm just as sick of the new boss as anybody, but it's definitely important news, and it's definitely tech-related. Sorry you have to live in this timeline. I'm sorry any of us have to live here.
- dpifke 4y agoThis site isn't for stories about social media or things that "shape our politics and our society," it's for stories that are interesting to hackers: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html There are other places to discuss the former. The initial stories about the Twitter acquisition arguably fell into the latter category, but the constant rumor-mongering, ad-hominem attacks, and ideological battles no longer do.
- 1attice 4y agoAs a hacker my intellectual curiosity is mostly about things that shape our politics and society.
- Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoOK, but at least some hackers are interested in the ways that tech companies shape our politics and our society. (Hacking society is about the biggest hack there is.)
- malermeister 4y agoDo you think hackers don't take an interest in tech that shapes our society? What is it you think we do, then?
- muzani 4y agoFlag the ones that violate guidelines (isn't intellectually gratifying). There's no downvote button on articles for a reason.
- dpifke 4y agoIt feels a bit Sisyphusian at this point. I think I've probably worn out my flagging privileges (they get taken away if you flag too many stories). The sequence seems to be: 1. Musk posts something on Twitter. (This gets posted to HN.) 2. Ten different news outlets publish stories about his tweet. (These all get posted to HN.) 3. Hundreds of "notable people" publicly react on Twitter/blogs/newsletters/etc. to the news stories about his tweet. (Some of these get posted to HN.) Some of these contain speculation that's essentially fanfic for/against their made-up image of Musk, whom they've never met and with whom they've never conversed. 4. News outlets start publishing stories about the tweet reactions, elevating gossip to "news" in the process. 5. We get a whole new news cycle about how the gossip—shocker!—turned out to be false. Then for each of these stories, the HN comment section invariably devolves into name-calling and the same, tired, boring ideological battles about whether or not all billionaires are bad. Maybe some sort of delay instead of moratorium? Or a ban on news stories about tweets (keeping the option of posting the tweet itself)? Or a stricter banhammer for commentators in these threads who can't behave? Flagging/downvoting no longer seems to be working.
- lovich 4y agoDo you think maybe it’s because so many others find it interesting that it counteracts you and the handful of others who might care enough to flag it?
- preordained 4y agoI'd like to on the one hand...but I don't want moratoriums and people deciding they know what's best for the group to be a thing...so, no.
- tsol 4y agoYes. Or at least some sort of limit on the number of stories in one day. Both sides of it are annoying. There's a reason they say 'theres no such thing as bad press'
- anjellow 4y agoIronically, this is the only article about musk/twitter on the front-page for me.
- Bubble_Pop_22 4y agoThere was an user a couple of days ago who linked a method to hide threads about Musk on HN. Does anybody have the link? I am on mobile but I am sure it will pop
- gatonegro 4y agoHere it is.[1] I missed the original post, thank you for mentioning it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33412932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33412932
- midislack 4y agoOnly if we can stop the Rust advocacy for 120 days.
- smrtinsert 4y agoWhy? Open discussion is exactly at the heart of the supposed "free speech" argument.
- lost_tourist 4y agoThat's what the upvotes are for. I don't think obvious tech news should be blocked when you have the option to skip it or just go to one of the several sites that only show the top X HN posts. Censoring stuff never helps.
- egberts1 4y agoHackers are all about separating the signal from the noise. This OP isn't even close; no signal, all noise.
- hayst4ck 4y agoI think what I would rather see is a new top level tab like ask and show for political/pop culture/"non curious" articles. There are some types of threads that are interesting, but ultimately hazardous to HN and curiosity destroying. I would guess that runs the risk of attracting the wrong type of commenters (often like myself) and that bleeding into the front page. It also creates a categorization problem and increased moderator work.
- papito 4y agoThis guy seems to be as exhausting as the last U.S. president, I guess.
- cbeach 4y agoThe bit that exhausts me is how everyone is suddenly trolling Musk, and that these trolls assume we all feel equally indignant about someone trying to stand up for free speech in the public square. It’s Trump Derangement Syndrome all over again.
- papito 4y ago"I am acting like an asshole and everyone seems to hate me. Oh, I KNOW, let me act like an asshole MORE! Hmm, more flak. I AM THE VICTIM EVERYONE IS OUT TO GET ME!"
- ricardonunez 4y agoIt has consumed every website. On Reddit, it is the same thing. One way could be like Reddit mega threads. It shows the current event, and it compiles every post into a list without consuming every slot at the top. The problem is that it requires moderation and somebody needs to collect them.
- dang 4y agoIt's a case of a MOT (major ongoing topic) a la Snowden in 2013. I know it's annoying. We don't want to suppress the topic altogether because when significant new information (SNI) does appear, it's important to have a thread about it—and if we don't, there will be a user rebellion in the other direction ("I can't believe this isn't on HN, I guess it's not a news site any more"). (Also, it isn't possible to suppress a topic altogether - users will just work around whatever automated restrictions we put in, and manual restrictions are inevitably partial.) The solution is to allow the submissions that contain SNI and to downweight the ones that don't. By downweight I mean that users can add flags and mods can add additional penalties. This solution is imperfect because when there are so many raindrops coming in, we can't dodge them all - but at least the worst copycat/followup posts, the ones that just repeat what has been said elsewhere, shouldn't stay on the front page for too long. More explanation here, with links to additional past explanations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33509084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33509084.