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It's censorship by hivemind. (popular in much social media. A kind of crowdsourced moderation) The hivemind censors any opinion in discord with its own. Which
by swayvil 3y ago
It's censorship by hivemind. (popular in much social media. A kind of crowdsourced moderation)
The hivemind censors any opinion in discord with its own.
Which is one path to harmony and peace. But at what price?
- aurizon 3y agoAlso called online group bullying, old time religions called it shunning, old UK unions called it 'sending to Coventry', ostracise, ghost = a way to harm people by collective and deniable group action.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- swayvil 3y agoMammalian tribe-forming automation?
- jamincan 3y agoRemoving the post entirely would be censorship. That's not what's happening.
- raincole 3y agoBut HN also removes comments that are flagged too many times, unless you turn on showdead. So yeah, censorship by hivemind is the proper description (by your definition).
- worthless-trash 3y agoYou're already grey friend.
- Bjartr 3y agoBy the literal definition of censorship, you are correct. HN, and most social media, make decisions about what gets shown and what doesn't. Any filtering, moderation, or removal of any content where the goal is to make things better (and so implies the removed item was in the way of good) is technically censorship. Even the likes of spam filtering is censorship. It is removal of objectionable content after all. But there's connotations to the term censorship that make it carry a stronger implied moral, or indeed political, judgement than terms like "filter" in contexts like this one. Maybe that's exactly what you wanted to communicate. However, as phrased, it's more likely to get a knee-jerk downvote rather than a reasoned response. Which is exactly why I chose to respond, I'd rather see a discussion on the topic rather than either your comment being ignored or removed. After all, that's why I come to HN, it censors in favor of discourse, and though it's imperfect, it does far better in practice than any other site I know of.
- swayvil 3y agoApparently 97% of the population can be relied upon to conform (according to a statistic I saw once). That casts the method into doubt I think. Yes, it's a massive labor saver. No, it is not intelligent.
- r3trohack3r 3y agoI don't think this take is necessarily wrong, but HN isn't a forum for free and open ideas in the way you're getting at. The purpose of this site is to surface content and discussion that is likely to be considered insightful, engaging, interesting, etc. to the specific demographic that reads this site. Consensus moderation is on point for this. You let the demographic that is on the site determine the value of the content on the site. Content that appeals to a minority of the demographic here is unlikely to get traction. That's kind of the point, I think. That doesn't mean minority viewpoints are unlikely to get traction, I do see engaging takes on minority viewpoints get traction on HN, I assume because they are both interesting and fun to engage with for the demographic that hangs out here.