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@dang is this off-topic or was this taken off frontpage due to high flags? seems like it was.

romafirst3 3y ago
I've become very concerned lately with the censorship on hacker news. The only way I found this page was by attempting to post the url. It's been essentially banished from the site, without even a comment on this thread about what happened or why. If we are going to censor things, this should be a transparent process not a covert activity where people don't even know they have been censored.
- dang 3y ago
  People use the word "censor" to mean so many things that it's hard to track, but in this case was HN working the way it always does and has for many years. It works the same way regardless of topic, and there was no moderator intervention. We sometimes intervene to turn off flags, but this wasn't the right thread for that, as I explained here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657527 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657527. The topic itself just had two massive threads on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616550 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38572675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38572675), so I don't think it's correct to call the topic censored. Re transparency, we don't publish a complete moderation log (I've written about why over the years: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderation%20log&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...), but we're happy to answer questions when people ask them, and believe it's in HN's long-term interest to err on the side of openness. I spend half my days these days answering this sort of question through email. Even when we can't answer a question completely, we can usually at least say why (e.g.: some of HN's anti-abuse software would stop working if we published how it works, so we can't answer that question completely). If you or anyone still has a question that I haven't answered here or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657527 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657527, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
  - romafirst3 3y ago
    I think that marking the actual post as "flagged" or "censored" would make it clear what is happening. A big banner across the top so that everyone on the post knows that their comments don't matter and they have been essentially cut off from the rest of the community. Hacker news however prefers doing things on the sly and that makes people feel bad. It is the opposite of open and transparent.
dang 3y ago
Users flagged it. We sometimes turn off flags, but I didn't do so in this case for multiple reasons. The primary reason is that HN just had two enormous threads about this topic: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616550 - Dec 2023 (1266 comments) The pro-Israel information war - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38572675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38572675 - Dec 2023 (1669 comments) There are other reasons why we didn't turn off flags in this case. I'll describe two. (1) The votes and comments on this thread didn't look organic to our software, nor to me. My guess is that someone was trying to promote this article on HN. If so, I'm sure it was for deeply felt reasons, but it's still not a good thing to do (not to mention against HN's rules, both in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html) and in practice it leads to a lesser quality of discussion. (2) If we're going to have further threads about this painful and divisive topic, it's better that the foundation not be an outright advocacy piece. This is not a criticism of the article, nor of the intention behind the article—it's a question of the impact on the thread. You can already see, in some of the angriest comments in this thread, what sort of hell the entire discussion would likely have turned into (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38645665 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38645665 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38646617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38646617). That is not what this site is for, it destroys what it is for, and I don't see how it helps anyone. Those who feel strongly in favor of a piece like this need to understand that there are also many users on whom it would have the opposite intense effect. It gets harder to communicate under such conditions, and HN threads are supposed to be meaningful communication, not battle. All of this was happening in two recent threads I linked to—including controversies about article choice. That is inevitable, but it's also a matter of degree.
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  Do you think there are any cases where expressions of anger are necessary or correct? Or are you only able to see things in terms of "quality discussion" and "meaningful communication." Do you measure that only in terms of apparently calmness of the participants. Do you see how this favors the party doing harm over the one being harmed? After all it's much easier to remain calm while you're transgressing than while you are being transgressed upon. Have you ever read that mlk speech about the white moderates. Do you view yourself as being more devoted to order than justice? From here this is explicitly the choice you're making, but I wonder if you understand it that way.

I've become very concerned lately with the censorship on hacker news. The only way I found this page was by attempting to post the url. It's been essentially banished from the site, without even a comment on this thread about what happened or why. If we are going to censor things, this should be a transparent process not a covert activity where people don't even know they have been censored.

dang 3y ago
People use the word "censor" to mean so many things that it's hard to track, but in this case was HN working the way it always does and has for many years. It works the same way regardless of topic, and there was no moderator intervention. We sometimes intervene to turn off flags, but this wasn't the right thread for that, as I explained here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657527 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657527. The topic itself just had two massive threads on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616550 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38572675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38572675), so I don't think it's correct to call the topic censored. Re transparency, we don't publish a complete moderation log (I've written about why over the years: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderation%20log&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...), but we're happy to answer questions when people ask them, and believe it's in HN's long-term interest to err on the side of openness. I spend half my days these days answering this sort of question through email. Even when we can't answer a question completely, we can usually at least say why (e.g.: some of HN's anti-abuse software would stop working if we published how it works, so we can't answer that question completely). If you or anyone still has a question that I haven't answered here or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657527 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657527, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
- romafirst3 3y ago
  I think that marking the actual post as "flagged" or "censored" would make it clear what is happening. A big banner across the top so that everyone on the post knows that their comments don't matter and they have been essentially cut off from the rest of the community. Hacker news however prefers doing things on the sly and that makes people feel bad. It is the opposite of open and transparent.

dang 3y ago

Users flagged it. We sometimes turn off flags, but I didn't do so in this case for multiple reasons. The primary reason is that HN just had two enormous threads about this topic: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616550 - Dec 2023 (1266 comments) The pro-Israel information war - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38572675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38572675 - Dec 2023 (1669 comments) There are other reasons why we didn't turn off flags in this case. I'll describe two. (1) The votes and comments on this thread didn't look organic to our software, nor to me. My guess is that someone was trying to promote this article on HN. If so, I'm sure it was for deeply felt reasons, but it's still not a good thing to do (not to mention against HN's rules, both in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html) and in practice it leads to a lesser quality of discussion. (2) If we're going to have further threads about this painful and divisive topic, it's better that the foundation not be an outright advocacy piece. This is not a criticism of the article, nor of the intention behind the article—it's a question of the impact on the thread. You can already see, in some of the angriest comments in this thread, what sort of hell the entire discussion would likely have turned into (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38645665 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38645665 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38646617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38646617). That is not what this site is for, it destroys what it is for, and I don't see how it helps anyone. Those who feel strongly in favor of a piece like this need to understand that there are also many users on whom it would have the opposite intense effect. It gets harder to communicate under such conditions, and HN threads are supposed to be meaningful communication, not battle. All of this was happening in two recent threads I linked to—including controversies about article choice. That is inevitable, but it's also a matter of degree.

giraffe_lady 3y ago
Do you think there are any cases where expressions of anger are necessary or correct? Or are you only able to see things in terms of "quality discussion" and "meaningful communication." Do you measure that only in terms of apparently calmness of the participants. Do you see how this favors the party doing harm over the one being harmed? After all it's much easier to remain calm while you're transgressing than while you are being transgressed upon. Have you ever read that mlk speech about the white moderates. Do you view yourself as being more devoted to order than justice? From here this is explicitly the choice you're making, but I wonder if you understand it that way.