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There were front page posts on this earlier today, but both were flagged and buried by Hacker News. Thread on person of the year: https://news.ycombinator.com/

• mustacheemperor 4y ago
  Disappointing to see they were flagged, but moreso to see the apparent ratio between downvotes and negative comments on those threads. Apparently a large subset of the community felt those posts should be removed from the front page, but didn’t feel obliged to explain why. It’s like Elon is becoming a radioactive element for this community’s health too. Edit: This submission also briefly showed as flagged sometime in the last 20m
  • mschuster91 4y ago
    People are sick and tired about constant news about Musk's latest crap antics, just like with Trump - basically, at least here in Europe, you can't go to bed and wake up without yet another newsflash of either a large Twitter outage or Elon Musk shitposting again. I get why people are exhausted, but the desensitization is dangerous on its own - when there are no consequences, people escalate their behavior... and Musk already has intervened to make Starlink less usable for Ukraine. I don't want that to continue.
    • 93po 4y ago
      > Musk already has intervened to make Starlink less usable for Ukraine. and here you are perpetuating the fake shit about Elon that gets everyone engaged. Elon doesn't want Starlink to be directly used on weapons to kill people. Would you also fault the World Nuclear Association for being willing to provide uranium to power Ukraine, but refusing to provide the same material for nuclear bombs? He has a right to determine whether he wants his technology to be used directly for offensive war efforts. He is still providing Starlink for general military operations and communications. He just doesn't want it directly enabling weapons.
      • mustacheemperor 4y ago
        Ukraine wants to use Starlink to make war, so when Elon intervenes to prevent the use of Starlink for certain applications in making war, he is making Starlink less usable for Ukraine. You're raising an argument for why it is in your view justifiable for Elon to do this, but that doesn't make the basic elements of what the commenter above said false. Nuclear weapons are far more destructive, and indiscriminately destructive, than the use of satcomms with conventional weapons, so I think that choice of comparison is hyperbolic and unreasonable. This seems more like Garmin sending GPS units to Ukraine but refusing them to be issued to tanks, and as much as Elon has the right to determine the use of the technology his firm is donating to Ukraine, people have the right to criticize his choice to do that. Ukrainians will die because of this decision, and it is fair for people to criticize the choices that lead to that result. Edit: I can't reply any further so I will just reiterate in reply here. Ukraine is using starlink for war, so making starlink unusable for weapons is making it less usable for Ukraine's use case, defending their country from invasion. How you choose to morally equivocate the invaders to the defenders is your decision, but it doesn't make what the commenter above said "fake" and it doesn't insulate Elon from criticism over his own decision.
        • 93po 4y ago
          It's not "less usable for Ukraine". It's working perfectly fine for Ukraine and Elon is going through massive efforts to ensure this. It's less usable for weapons. What the parent comment said was outright misleading to the point of basically being a lie. > Ukrainians will die because of this decision And Russians would die if he made the other decision. Even if Russia is on the wrong side here, killing a bunch of 20 year old soldiers while they sit around in mud doesn't help much. They're still humans and I also wouldn't want any part in killing humans.
          • KptMarchewa 4y ago
            >It's working perfectly fine for Ukraine No, because Ukraine needs to kill russians and destroy their war machine. Musk's actions prevents this. >And Russians would die if he made the other decision. Great!
• djmashko2 4y ago
  Pretty disappointing to see all of these stories being dropped from the front page.
• dang 4y ago
  They were flagged—correctly—by users. More at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35060935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35060935.
  • bmitc 4y ago
    One of the posted articles had nothing to do with Elon Musk. It still got flagged. So I disagree that it was flagged correctly.
    • dang 4y ago
      It has everything to do with the current rage drama ̶,̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶r̶y̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶k̶n̶o̶w̶s̶. One test for this would be: is the discussion substantially different in that thread? The answer is clearly no.
      • bmitc 4y ago
        Is there not a distinction between the post and the discussion? Because ... > It has everything to do with the current rage drama, as everyone knows. no, I didn't know that until there was a comment about it and another post on Hacker News. The discussion I saw seemed within reason.
        • dang 4y ago
          You're right—sorry! I've scratched that bit now (it wasn't necessary anyhow)