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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

by 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.
mrguyorama 3y ago
>The HN crowd is not your average layman - it's largely well read and educated people. People need to stop thinking this. There's no filter in front of the HN sign up. The community here is the same as the community anywhere else on the internet. We aren't special
- xNeil 3y ago
  That's a very valid point! I simply assumed due to the subject matter (coding discussion, in depth tech industry discussions), the average HN reader would be more well read as opposed to your average X user.
  - warrenm 3y ago
    Being deeply informed on a handful of subjects is not the same as "more well read" It's "more well read about those subjects" :)
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Why? Why do you believe that someone familiar with coding discussion and tech industry discussions to be more likely to be well read than an average person? I am explicitly asking you to reconsider these assumptions, think about where they come from, and think if they have any real data to back them up at all
    - xNeil 3y ago
      because someone familiar with coding discussion will likely have a basic grasp on logic and maths. this alone makes them more ‘well read’ than the average X user, especially considering all the conspiracy theories (and groupthink) floating around on the site.
pb7 3y ago
> The HN crowd is not your average layman - it's largely well read and educated people. It most certainly is the exact mixture of people as you’d find elsewhere. The only difference is they’ll (we’ll) foam at the mouth over something vaguely tangential to tech vs. some other topic. Here's a recent example of the type of take you might find here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37113312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37113312
sanderjd 3y ago
Because it's a service to us that makes the site more valuable. I have exactly zero interest in spending my time here deciding what is or isn't propaganda. I deeply appreciate "some arbitrary authority" providing that hard and mostly thankless service to me. Even if I miss a few things that I wouldn't consider to be spam / abuse / propaganda but which they did, that is a tiny price to pay for having a place to come read things that is mostly free of all that crap.

by xNeil 3y ago

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.

mrguyorama 3y ago

>The HN crowd is not your average layman - it's largely well read and educated people. People need to stop thinking this. There's no filter in front of the HN sign up. The community here is the same as the community anywhere else on the internet. We aren't special

xNeil 3y ago
That's a very valid point! I simply assumed due to the subject matter (coding discussion, in depth tech industry discussions), the average HN reader would be more well read as opposed to your average X user.
- warrenm 3y ago
  Being deeply informed on a handful of subjects is not the same as "more well read" It's "more well read about those subjects" :)
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Why? Why do you believe that someone familiar with coding discussion and tech industry discussions to be more likely to be well read than an average person? I am explicitly asking you to reconsider these assumptions, think about where they come from, and think if they have any real data to back them up at all
  - xNeil 3y ago
    because someone familiar with coding discussion will likely have a basic grasp on logic and maths. this alone makes them more ‘well read’ than the average X user, especially considering all the conspiracy theories (and groupthink) floating around on the site.

pb7 3y ago

> The HN crowd is not your average layman - it's largely well read and educated people. It most certainly is the exact mixture of people as you’d find elsewhere. The only difference is they’ll (we’ll) foam at the mouth over something vaguely tangential to tech vs. some other topic. Here's a recent example of the type of take you might find here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37113312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37113312

sanderjd 3y ago

Because it's a service to us that makes the site more valuable. I have exactly zero interest in spending my time here deciding what is or isn't propaganda. I deeply appreciate "some arbitrary authority" providing that hard and mostly thankless service to me. Even if I miss a few things that I wouldn't consider to be spam / abuse / propaganda but which they did, that is a tiny price to pay for having a place to come read things that is mostly free of all that crap.