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I subscribe to the HN RSS feed, which shows flagged items since they're published on the feed before they're flagged. The craziest thing that stands out to me i

I subscribe to the HN RSS feed, which shows flagged items since they're published on the feed before they're flagged. The craziest thing that stands out to me is how so many negative stories on Sam Altman end up being flagged, even though they are just as legit as the positive ones. I'm almost 100% certain that HN is highly manipulated for this story. For no other topic have I seen so many flagged stories, and all of them are the ones that paint Sam in a negative light.

hn1986 3y ago
Similar to Elon Musk stories..
wahnfrieden 3y ago
HN is strongly anti-controversy. So when you have a large enough minority of users who rally around flagging certain topics, they easily get taken down even if there’s otherwise interest in the discussion. I don’t think it requires owner manipulation. You can see it in how things like any coverage of Palestinian perspective getting flagged immediately while coverage of far-right ancap politics lingers despite both being contentious political topics (where ancap discussion is controversial but detractors lack the habitual urge to flag brigade and are more open to discuss).
- verall 3y ago
  There are topics where I'm interested in discussion but I don't think HN is mature enough to discuss them so the early comments are very thin ideology or discrimination so I just flag the article, even if it was good. I'm probably not alone in this.
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    That’s my point: yours is a weaker urge than the calls to take down Palestinian perspective as being terrorist sympathizing and antisemitic that come from that particular flag-brigade set (as one example), compared with diffuse concern over immaturity
    - hutzlibu 3y ago
      "to take down Palestinian perspective" I sometimes also do other things than reading HN, but what stood out to me, was that I read nothing about the conflict here at all and anything related to it was flagged. Likely because it would evolve into a flamewar after 3 comments.
- phlakaton 3y ago
  Strongly anti-controversy?! This whole thing has been like Christmas come early for me. There's a strong contingent of people here who have no illusions about Altman's ambitions. That being said, Hacker News is primarily for news, and it's tech-oriented. I would not expect Palestinian broadsides (whether for or against) to fare well.
dagmx 3y ago
A large contingent of people here (and anywhere) are prone to hero worship, especially if it tends towards trendy topics like generative AI. The natural reaction to criticism of an idol is to shut it down so you can maintain a singular narrative lest you have to deal with cognitive dissonance. Which I find ironic, because I’ll see the same people looking down on non technical people idolizing celebrities, but not recognize that it’s the same thing in a different field. The height of Elon worship was identical to Swifties imho.
- xracy 3y ago
  The difference between Elon and Swift, is the scale to which they are able to use capitalism for their means. I think Elon is scarier for that reason. (Not absolving Swift of that, though).
  - dagmx 3y ago
    I would say the bigger scary thing is how they capitalize their fame to progress agenda, in addition to what you said. One of Swift’s big appeal outside her media, is that she presents herself as a blank canvas for her fans to project themselves on. While I wish she used her platform for more positive advocation , it’s a lot better for her to be neutral than Musks’s aggressively negative use of his platform (especially in recent times).
  - bogomipz 3y ago
    Isn't the scale proportional though as Elon has 6 companies and Taylor has only 1? Fascinatingly Taylor Swift has convinced her fans to rebuy re-recorded versions of all of her earlier albums. Not just one album either. So far it has been 4 of them with 6 in total. Her justification of this is purely capitalistic. This is kind of unprecedented, and the success of this for her has been quite spectacular. See: https://time.com/5949979/why-taylor-swift-is-rerecording-old-albums/ https://time.com/5949979/why-taylor-swift-is-rerecording-old... https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/arts/music/taylor-swift-1989-taylors-version-sales.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/arts/music/taylor-swift-1... https://www.billboard.com/lists/taylor-swift-taylors-version-stats-chart-numbers/a-big-difference-in-total-streams/ https://www.billboard.com/lists/taylor-swift-taylors-version...
lessbergstein 3y ago
This website is YCombinator. Sam was with YCombinator
- nouveaux 3y ago
  Did you read the article? Sam was fired by YCombinator.
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    But is this really a solid fact? PG did not comment on it and all the other sources are anonymous.
- dang 3y ago
  We don't moderate HN according to that. I wrote extensively about this yesterday if anyone wants a verbose explanation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38372059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38372059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38372393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38372393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38372125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38372125
  - lessbergstein 3y ago
    They had to make these rules because they weren't being followed
    - dang 3y ago
      No, to my knowledge, pg had that rule in place right from the beginning.
moralestapia 3y ago
I've noticed this as well, although empirically. I don't sympathize with @sama, more so, my personal opinion of him is that he definitely shows off a lot of psychopathic traits, but that said ... ... I'm also ok with keeping those topics outside the scope of this community, which is mainly tech-related and that's what I enjoy about it. Personal affairs belong elsewhere, IMO.
dang 3y ago
I don't know what you mean by "manipulated" but these flags were, and are, coming from users, not admins. The most likely explanation isn't sinister—it's that readers were fatigued by the tsunami of stories about this saga, and were flagging the ones that didn't seem to contain significant new information (a.k.a. SNI: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22significant%20new%20information%22%20by%3Adang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). I realize your perception was that all the negative ones got flagged, but this perception is most likely a function of your own preference (you're more likely to notice it when a story that you agree with gets flagged, because people are more likely to notice what they dislike: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20notice%20dislike&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). Probably Sam feels like all the positive stories are getting flagged :) I wrote a longer explanation about how we treat story floods like this from a moderation point of view, if anyone wants to read about that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357788. Edit: and this applies to the OP, which actually does contain SNI. I've turned user flags off on this submission and changed the title to be the article's HTML doc title, which is more specific.
w10-1 3y ago
> For no other topic have I seen so many flagged stories, and all of them are the ones that paint Sam in a negative light This isn't evaluating products for use with pluses and minuses. Attacks on reputation need to be very, very well substantiated or they are libel (business libel in this case). It's also morally wrong, it leads to the worst kinds of resentful discussions, and frankly, this is not really the place for that if indeed you want justice. In this case, the board made a decision that broke the reliance of all OpenAI stakeholders on Altman's leadership, with no evidence and little explanation. If OpenAI was transitioned properly and with due care to another CEO, it would have been business as usual.
itsdrewmiller 3y ago
Some of the rss feed items are being straight up removed rather than just the typical flagged/dead that you normally see - none of them have looked extremely legit to me though.

hn1986 3y ago

Similar to Elon Musk stories..

wahnfrieden 3y ago

HN is strongly anti-controversy. So when you have a large enough minority of users who rally around flagging certain topics, they easily get taken down even if there’s otherwise interest in the discussion. I don’t think it requires owner manipulation. You can see it in how things like any coverage of Palestinian perspective getting flagged immediately while coverage of far-right ancap politics lingers despite both being contentious political topics (where ancap discussion is controversial but detractors lack the habitual urge to flag brigade and are more open to discuss).

verall 3y ago
There are topics where I'm interested in discussion but I don't think HN is mature enough to discuss them so the early comments are very thin ideology or discrimination so I just flag the article, even if it was good. I'm probably not alone in this.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  That’s my point: yours is a weaker urge than the calls to take down Palestinian perspective as being terrorist sympathizing and antisemitic that come from that particular flag-brigade set (as one example), compared with diffuse concern over immaturity
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    "to take down Palestinian perspective" I sometimes also do other things than reading HN, but what stood out to me, was that I read nothing about the conflict here at all and anything related to it was flagged. Likely because it would evolve into a flamewar after 3 comments.
phlakaton 3y ago
Strongly anti-controversy?! This whole thing has been like Christmas come early for me. There's a strong contingent of people here who have no illusions about Altman's ambitions. That being said, Hacker News is primarily for news, and it's tech-oriented. I would not expect Palestinian broadsides (whether for or against) to fare well.

dagmx 3y ago

A large contingent of people here (and anywhere) are prone to hero worship, especially if it tends towards trendy topics like generative AI. The natural reaction to criticism of an idol is to shut it down so you can maintain a singular narrative lest you have to deal with cognitive dissonance. Which I find ironic, because I’ll see the same people looking down on non technical people idolizing celebrities, but not recognize that it’s the same thing in a different field. The height of Elon worship was identical to Swifties imho.

xracy 3y ago
The difference between Elon and Swift, is the scale to which they are able to use capitalism for their means. I think Elon is scarier for that reason. (Not absolving Swift of that, though).
- dagmx 3y ago
  I would say the bigger scary thing is how they capitalize their fame to progress agenda, in addition to what you said. One of Swift’s big appeal outside her media, is that she presents herself as a blank canvas for her fans to project themselves on. While I wish she used her platform for more positive advocation , it’s a lot better for her to be neutral than Musks’s aggressively negative use of his platform (especially in recent times).
- bogomipz 3y ago
  Isn't the scale proportional though as Elon has 6 companies and Taylor has only 1? Fascinatingly Taylor Swift has convinced her fans to rebuy re-recorded versions of all of her earlier albums. Not just one album either. So far it has been 4 of them with 6 in total. Her justification of this is purely capitalistic. This is kind of unprecedented, and the success of this for her has been quite spectacular. See: https://time.com/5949979/why-taylor-swift-is-rerecording-old-albums/ https://time.com/5949979/why-taylor-swift-is-rerecording-old... https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/arts/music/taylor-swift-1989-taylors-version-sales.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/arts/music/taylor-swift-1... https://www.billboard.com/lists/taylor-swift-taylors-version-stats-chart-numbers/a-big-difference-in-total-streams/ https://www.billboard.com/lists/taylor-swift-taylors-version...

lessbergstein 3y ago

This website is YCombinator. Sam was with YCombinator

nouveaux 3y ago
Did you read the article? Sam was fired by YCombinator.
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  But is this really a solid fact? PG did not comment on it and all the other sources are anonymous.
dang 3y ago
We don't moderate HN according to that. I wrote extensively about this yesterday if anyone wants a verbose explanation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38372059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38372059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38372393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38372393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38372125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38372125
- lessbergstein 3y ago
  They had to make these rules because they weren't being followed
  - dang 3y ago
    No, to my knowledge, pg had that rule in place right from the beginning.

moralestapia 3y ago

I've noticed this as well, although empirically. I don't sympathize with @sama, more so, my personal opinion of him is that he definitely shows off a lot of psychopathic traits, but that said ... ... I'm also ok with keeping those topics outside the scope of this community, which is mainly tech-related and that's what I enjoy about it. Personal affairs belong elsewhere, IMO.

dang 3y ago

I don't know what you mean by "manipulated" but these flags were, and are, coming from users, not admins. The most likely explanation isn't sinister—it's that readers were fatigued by the tsunami of stories about this saga, and were flagging the ones that didn't seem to contain significant new information (a.k.a. SNI: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22significant%20new%20information%22%20by%3Adang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). I realize your perception was that all the negative ones got flagged, but this perception is most likely a function of your own preference (you're more likely to notice it when a story that you agree with gets flagged, because people are more likely to notice what they dislike: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20notice%20dislike&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). Probably Sam feels like all the positive stories are getting flagged :) I wrote a longer explanation about how we treat story floods like this from a moderation point of view, if anyone wants to read about that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357788. Edit: and this applies to the OP, which actually does contain SNI. I've turned user flags off on this submission and changed the title to be the article's HTML doc title, which is more specific.

w10-1 3y ago

> For no other topic have I seen so many flagged stories, and all of them are the ones that paint Sam in a negative light This isn't evaluating products for use with pluses and minuses. Attacks on reputation need to be very, very well substantiated or they are libel (business libel in this case). It's also morally wrong, it leads to the worst kinds of resentful discussions, and frankly, this is not really the place for that if indeed you want justice. In this case, the board made a decision that broke the reliance of all OpenAI stakeholders on Altman's leadership, with no evidence and little explanation. If OpenAI was transitioned properly and with due care to another CEO, it would have been business as usual.

itsdrewmiller 3y ago

Some of the rss feed items are being straight up removed rather than just the typical flagged/dead that you normally see - none of them have looked extremely legit to me though.