6 ms·

And how was the decision made to ban Federalist, but not say Guardian or The Daily Beast? Do you have any process in place to ensure that your political biases

And how was the decision made to ban Federalist, but not say Guardian or The Daily Beast? Do you have any process in place to ensure that your political biases don't influence the list, or you don't care about that?

cornel_io 3y ago
I'm guessing it's reactive, and Federalist links tended to be garbage often enough to convince someone they should hit the ban button, whereas the others didn't rise up with trash often enough to matter?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
chasing 3y ago
[flagged]
- mutant_glofish 3y ago
  > It's under no obligation to be politically balanced. And obviously, I'm under no obligation to not voice my concern about that.
  - adamckay 3y ago
    > And obviously, I'm under no obligation to not voice my concern about that. Except... You are... The guidelines [1] of the site outline that most discussion of politics is off-topic as it most often doesn't gratify one's intellectual curiosity. It's rather explicit, too: "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle.". 1- https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jesterson 3y ago
  > no obligation to promote right-wing propaganda and hate Your poor unintentional choice of words (hopefully) makes it sound like left-wing propaganda and hate is something worthy of being promoted. Do hope you don't mean it this way.
- xNeil 3y ago
  I came to HN because it seemed to be a place of free dialogue. > It's certainly under no obligation to promote right-wing propaganda and hate. It's certainly under no obligation to promote any propaganda or hate. That's what makes the site great. The HN crowd is not your average layman - it's largely well read and educated people. Why not let them decide what is propaganda and what's not (as opposed to some arbitrary authority deciding this)?
  - danparsonson 3y ago
    > The HN crowd is not your average layman - it's largely well read and educated people. Why not let them decide what is propaganda and what's not (as opposed to some arbitrary authority deciding this)? That is at best a very naïve take. This is a public forum, not some secret society of like-minded intelligentsia.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - vasco 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - stonogo 3y ago
    I came to HN because it seemed to be a place of free dialogue. It certainly does feel like a series of monologues at times.
  - toofy 3y ago
    > …some arbitrary authority deciding… something tells me the team here is anything but arbitrary. i can assure you, keeping a community this healthy at this scale is pretty incredible. what you’re suggesting is to raise the noise and for the users to wade through noise hunting for signal. what rises to the top here is so much better than any of the noisy sites. on those sites, by the time you find a signal, the information is usually amateur-hour tier. to use an idiom i heard yesterday, sites with little moderation are like searching for a hymen in a whorehouse.
  - 3y ago
afavour 3y ago
Why do you assume the Federalist is blocked because of its political leanings?
dang 3y ago
We don't have "processes" at HN. The idea makes my skin crawl. Plenty of both left- and right-wing sites are banned and/or downweighted on HN. When a site is primarily about political battle, we either ban it or downweight it. Which of the two we choose depends on how likely the site is to produce the occasional interesting article (in HN's sense of the word "interesting"). That's why The Federalist and World Workers Daily (or whatever it's called) are banned, while National Review and Jacobin are merely downweighted. Both the Guardian and Daily Beast are downweighted, btw, as are most major media sites. If you or anyone thinks that HN moderation is unfairly ideologically biased, I'm open to the critique, but you guys need to first look at the site as it actually is, and not just look at your own pre-existing perceptions. Every data point becomes a Convincing Proof when you do the latter. People think that when their team gets moderated, the mods are OMG obviously on the other side. The Other Side feels exactly the same way. This "they're against me" perception is the most reliable phenomenon I've observed on HN. Leftists feel it, rightists feel it, Go programmers feel it, even Rust programmers feel it. Literally the very-most-popular topic on HN at any moment is perceived by someone as Viciously Suppressed because of this perception. Stop and think about that—it's kind of amazing. Someone should write a PhD thesis.
- rhaksw 3y ago
  > you guys need to first look at the site as it actually is, and not just look at your own pre-existing perceptions. How can one see the site "as it actually is" when the decisions are kept secret from submitters? > People think that when their team gets moderated, the mods are OMG obviously on the other side. The Other Side feels exactly the same way. This will always be a thing. But it's also true that society is more divided now than it was 20 years ago. We find ourselves unable to communicate across ideological divides and we resort to shouting or in some cases violence. Some effort must be made to improve communication, and transparency for content authors is a minimal step towards that.
- dontupvoteme 3y ago
  Would you be open to publishing the down-weighting values if they're based on politics not spam? This is the murkiest part to me since it's not just a binary flag.

cornel_io 3y ago

I'm guessing it's reactive, and Federalist links tended to be garbage often enough to convince someone they should hit the ban button, whereas the others didn't rise up with trash often enough to matter?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

chasing 3y ago

[flagged]

mutant_glofish 3y ago
> It's under no obligation to be politically balanced. And obviously, I'm under no obligation to not voice my concern about that.
- adamckay 3y ago
  > And obviously, I'm under no obligation to not voice my concern about that. Except... You are... The guidelines [1] of the site outline that most discussion of politics is off-topic as it most often doesn't gratify one's intellectual curiosity. It's rather explicit, too: "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle.". 1- https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
jesterson 3y ago
> no obligation to promote right-wing propaganda and hate Your poor unintentional choice of words (hopefully) makes it sound like left-wing propaganda and hate is something worthy of being promoted. Do hope you don't mean it this way.
xNeil 3y ago
I came to HN because it seemed to be a place of free dialogue. > It's certainly under no obligation to promote right-wing propaganda and hate. It's certainly under no obligation to promote any propaganda or hate. That's what makes the site great. The HN crowd is not your average layman - it's largely well read and educated people. Why not let them decide what is propaganda and what's not (as opposed to some arbitrary authority deciding this)?
- danparsonson 3y ago
  > The HN crowd is not your average layman - it's largely well read and educated people. Why not let them decide what is propaganda and what's not (as opposed to some arbitrary authority deciding this)? That is at best a very naïve take. This is a public forum, not some secret society of like-minded intelligentsia.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- vasco 3y ago
  [flagged]
- stonogo 3y ago
  I came to HN because it seemed to be a place of free dialogue. It certainly does feel like a series of monologues at times.
- toofy 3y ago
  > …some arbitrary authority deciding… something tells me the team here is anything but arbitrary. i can assure you, keeping a community this healthy at this scale is pretty incredible. what you’re suggesting is to raise the noise and for the users to wade through noise hunting for signal. what rises to the top here is so much better than any of the noisy sites. on those sites, by the time you find a signal, the information is usually amateur-hour tier. to use an idiom i heard yesterday, sites with little moderation are like searching for a hymen in a whorehouse.
- 3y ago

afavour 3y ago

Why do you assume the Federalist is blocked because of its political leanings?

dang 3y ago

We don't have "processes" at HN. The idea makes my skin crawl. Plenty of both left- and right-wing sites are banned and/or downweighted on HN. When a site is primarily about political battle, we either ban it or downweight it. Which of the two we choose depends on how likely the site is to produce the occasional interesting article (in HN's sense of the word "interesting"). That's why The Federalist and World Workers Daily (or whatever it's called) are banned, while National Review and Jacobin are merely downweighted. Both the Guardian and Daily Beast are downweighted, btw, as are most major media sites. If you or anyone thinks that HN moderation is unfairly ideologically biased, I'm open to the critique, but you guys need to first look at the site as it actually is, and not just look at your own pre-existing perceptions. Every data point becomes a Convincing Proof when you do the latter. People think that when their team gets moderated, the mods are OMG obviously on the other side. The Other Side feels exactly the same way. This "they're against me" perception is the most reliable phenomenon I've observed on HN. Leftists feel it, rightists feel it, Go programmers feel it, even Rust programmers feel it. Literally the very-most-popular topic on HN at any moment is perceived by someone as Viciously Suppressed because of this perception. Stop and think about that—it's kind of amazing. Someone should write a PhD thesis.

rhaksw 3y ago
> you guys need to first look at the site as it actually is, and not just look at your own pre-existing perceptions. How can one see the site "as it actually is" when the decisions are kept secret from submitters? > People think that when their team gets moderated, the mods are OMG obviously on the other side. The Other Side feels exactly the same way. This will always be a thing. But it's also true that society is more divided now than it was 20 years ago. We find ourselves unable to communicate across ideological divides and we resort to shouting or in some cases violence. Some effort must be made to improve communication, and transparency for content authors is a minimal step towards that.
dontupvoteme 3y ago
Would you be open to publishing the down-weighting values if they're based on politics not spam? This is the murkiest part to me since it's not just a binary flag.