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I disagree slightly. Usually HN is fine, but there's a lot of weird shifts in site culture. Sometimes you'll see comments on political submissions slide way to

I disagree slightly. Usually HN is fine, but there's a lot of weird shifts in site culture. Sometimes you'll see comments on political submissions slide way to the right and shit gets flagged. My tinfoil regarding this is that HN is getting freep'd[0] - a thread gets linked on a conservative or far-right forum and is either flag bombed or spammed with propaganda comments. As mentioned in the "implicit downrank of DEI" section, the moderators try to unflag these threads (since they're relevant and people want to talk about them) but they just get flagged by the community a second time. If I had access to a better moderated community not being actively attacked by the far right, I'd use it. But I'm not aware of any[1]. [0] Short for "Free Republic" - a conservative political forum that would ballot stuff online polls for the sake of pushing their political agenda. [1] Note that I stopped posting to Reddit after /u/Spez decided to powertrip to kill a mod protest over third-party API clients.

sph 3y ago
> shit gets flagged. My tinfoil regarding this is that HN is getting freep'd[0] - a thread gets linked on a conservative or far-right forum and is either flag bombed or spammed with propaganda comments. With less aluminium foil: HN has an crude anti-flamewar system that roughly triggers when the ratio comments/upvotes is greater than 1, and the post is quickly deranked. Often this means it is a controversial post, but I've seen it happen with two or three posts/Ask HN of mine where a vibrant discussion causes them to disappear from the frontpage after 1 hour because commenters were too active and triggered the anti-flamewar system, which is quite disappointing. Please, not everything on the Internet revolves around your political issues. But if it were the case of a thread linked elsewhere and flooded, this system would trigger as well.
pests 3y ago
I have never once thought of this place as getting attacked by the far right.
- foldr 3y ago
  'Attacked' is a bit subjective, but there are certainly trigger topics that attract large numbers of strongly right-leaning posters. I won't list these topics as they are basically exactly the 'culture wars' topics that you'd expect. I do personally find HN quite uncomfortable when discussion strays into social issues. I obviously don't feel that unwelcome here as I've been here since 2009. But there is a lot of bottled-up hostility to certain groups of people that can be released when the discussion takes a certain turn. And my subjective perception is that this has got much worse over the past decade. Extremist comments usually get flagged eventually, but lots of people have already read them by the time that happens, and you can post outrageous things here without actually getting your account banned. It's galling to be a member of group X, see an unambiguously hateful comment about group X, and then see this same account continuing to post for years afterwards.
  - zerbinxx 3y ago
    Like a lot of non-mainstream forums, HN lives in a weird world, especially after the ban on political posting (here) and the rise of greater web content moderation (here and abroad) post 2015-2016. With tech being a space that attracts everything from VC/finance/business people (usually a bit righter-wing), academics and journalists (usually more left) and hackers (who knows/free thinkers), I’m fairly surprised at the overall level of cohesion here. One thing I’m more or less convinced of is that the tech world has changed a lot from the millennial era of “free thinker”ism and Obama-era liberal optimism. We now skew older, more conservative than 2009 (not necessarily right wing, but less “move fast and break things”), and, in some cases, more disillusioned with the trajectory of tech from a cool, nerdy backwater (pre dotcom boom) to a major cultural and economic engine. As a side note, there are several good articles and documentaries that track cultural trends in HN, 4chan, reddit, and other online spaces in the transition from the wild-west to the walled garden. Will post links if I can dig them up.
- mrd3v0 3y ago
  Well I recently replied to an upvoted comment all but calling furry a disease. You can really see it in any comment section that even tangentially touches upon topics like immigration.
  - DANmode 3y ago
    > "all but" ? > pretending there isn't a large self-labeled intersection in the furry and aspergers communities
    - saagarjha 3y ago
      There’s a big difference in identifying with a particular condition, and painting the entire group with that brush.
    - kmeisthax 3y ago
      Autism is not a disease. Nor is wearing an animal costume as a hobby. Also, we probably shouldn't call it Aspergers, because naming something you are after the person the Nazis hired to decide whether or not you needed to be 'healed' of it[0][1] is kind of... really terrible? Like, I don't know how we let Hans Asperger get away with this shit. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Asperger#World_War_II_(1939-1945) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Asperger#World_War_II_(19... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am_Spiegelgrund_clinic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am_Spiegelgrund_clinic
Tainnor 3y ago
I hate this idea that discussion on HN is inherently "better" or "more civilised" than in other forums. Some HN users will say the most outrageous things but with a superficial layer of "civility". Parts of this site were a cesspool during the pandemic. No matter your position on it, discussion was of really low quality. Certain other emotionally charged topics (anything Apple, anything politics related, Elon Musk) also attract really bad discussion. By and large, humans suck and aren't capable of reasonable debate when emotion runs high, and this place is no exception.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  Nothing particularly wrong with saying "outrageous" things if that's what you personally believe. People should be able to just speak their minds in good faith without shame. If others don't like those ideas, oh well. They're not invalidated by being "outrageous". Discussion here is certainly a lot better than many other places on the internet that will just straight up ban you if you post ideas the moderators consider wrongthink. Moderation here has been pretty fair. I don't generally see people getting censored here. Sometimes discussions get out of hand and dang asks people to stop reducing the quality of the site. That's absolutely fine and they're actually quite nice about it.
  - Tainnor 3y ago
    > Nothing particularly wrong with saying "outrageous" things if that's what you personally believe. You can have that opinion, but I'll just point out that there's enough people who feel alienated if straight up racism, sexism, homophobia, antisemitism, islamophobia or endorsement of terrorist organisations are tolerated. Maybe you feel that these people just shouldn't participate on this site, but I'd much rather the bigots didn't participate. Either way, it's a choice. > Discussion here is certainly a lot better than many other places on the internet [...] No, I disagree, it's just different. People are biased everywhere, it's just that HN users tend to have different biases than, say, certain subreddits.
throwoutway 3y ago
> attacked by the far right Can we stop labeling everyhing you disagree with or anyone who disagrees with your world view as "far right". By doing so, you are perpetuating a false dichotonmy when there is a diverse political spectrum. Also, leftists attack forums as well

sph 3y ago

> shit gets flagged. My tinfoil regarding this is that HN is getting freep'd[0] - a thread gets linked on a conservative or far-right forum and is either flag bombed or spammed with propaganda comments. With less aluminium foil: HN has an crude anti-flamewar system that roughly triggers when the ratio comments/upvotes is greater than 1, and the post is quickly deranked. Often this means it is a controversial post, but I've seen it happen with two or three posts/Ask HN of mine where a vibrant discussion causes them to disappear from the frontpage after 1 hour because commenters were too active and triggered the anti-flamewar system, which is quite disappointing. Please, not everything on the Internet revolves around your political issues. But if it were the case of a thread linked elsewhere and flooded, this system would trigger as well.

pests 3y ago

I have never once thought of this place as getting attacked by the far right.

foldr 3y ago
'Attacked' is a bit subjective, but there are certainly trigger topics that attract large numbers of strongly right-leaning posters. I won't list these topics as they are basically exactly the 'culture wars' topics that you'd expect. I do personally find HN quite uncomfortable when discussion strays into social issues. I obviously don't feel that unwelcome here as I've been here since 2009. But there is a lot of bottled-up hostility to certain groups of people that can be released when the discussion takes a certain turn. And my subjective perception is that this has got much worse over the past decade. Extremist comments usually get flagged eventually, but lots of people have already read them by the time that happens, and you can post outrageous things here without actually getting your account banned. It's galling to be a member of group X, see an unambiguously hateful comment about group X, and then see this same account continuing to post for years afterwards.
- zerbinxx 3y ago
  Like a lot of non-mainstream forums, HN lives in a weird world, especially after the ban on political posting (here) and the rise of greater web content moderation (here and abroad) post 2015-2016. With tech being a space that attracts everything from VC/finance/business people (usually a bit righter-wing), academics and journalists (usually more left) and hackers (who knows/free thinkers), I’m fairly surprised at the overall level of cohesion here. One thing I’m more or less convinced of is that the tech world has changed a lot from the millennial era of “free thinker”ism and Obama-era liberal optimism. We now skew older, more conservative than 2009 (not necessarily right wing, but less “move fast and break things”), and, in some cases, more disillusioned with the trajectory of tech from a cool, nerdy backwater (pre dotcom boom) to a major cultural and economic engine. As a side note, there are several good articles and documentaries that track cultural trends in HN, 4chan, reddit, and other online spaces in the transition from the wild-west to the walled garden. Will post links if I can dig them up.
mrd3v0 3y ago
Well I recently replied to an upvoted comment all but calling furry a disease. You can really see it in any comment section that even tangentially touches upon topics like immigration.
- DANmode 3y ago
  > "all but" ? > pretending there isn't a large self-labeled intersection in the furry and aspergers communities
  - saagarjha 3y ago
    There’s a big difference in identifying with a particular condition, and painting the entire group with that brush.
  - kmeisthax 3y ago
    Autism is not a disease. Nor is wearing an animal costume as a hobby. Also, we probably shouldn't call it Aspergers, because naming something you are after the person the Nazis hired to decide whether or not you needed to be 'healed' of it[0][1] is kind of... really terrible? Like, I don't know how we let Hans Asperger get away with this shit. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Asperger#World_War_II_(1939-1945) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Asperger#World_War_II_(19... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am_Spiegelgrund_clinic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am_Spiegelgrund_clinic

Tainnor 3y ago

I hate this idea that discussion on HN is inherently "better" or "more civilised" than in other forums. Some HN users will say the most outrageous things but with a superficial layer of "civility". Parts of this site were a cesspool during the pandemic. No matter your position on it, discussion was of really low quality. Certain other emotionally charged topics (anything Apple, anything politics related, Elon Musk) also attract really bad discussion. By and large, humans suck and aren't capable of reasonable debate when emotion runs high, and this place is no exception.

matheusmoreira 3y ago
Nothing particularly wrong with saying "outrageous" things if that's what you personally believe. People should be able to just speak their minds in good faith without shame. If others don't like those ideas, oh well. They're not invalidated by being "outrageous". Discussion here is certainly a lot better than many other places on the internet that will just straight up ban you if you post ideas the moderators consider wrongthink. Moderation here has been pretty fair. I don't generally see people getting censored here. Sometimes discussions get out of hand and dang asks people to stop reducing the quality of the site. That's absolutely fine and they're actually quite nice about it.
- Tainnor 3y ago
  > Nothing particularly wrong with saying "outrageous" things if that's what you personally believe. You can have that opinion, but I'll just point out that there's enough people who feel alienated if straight up racism, sexism, homophobia, antisemitism, islamophobia or endorsement of terrorist organisations are tolerated. Maybe you feel that these people just shouldn't participate on this site, but I'd much rather the bigots didn't participate. Either way, it's a choice. > Discussion here is certainly a lot better than many other places on the internet [...] No, I disagree, it's just different. People are biased everywhere, it's just that HN users tend to have different biases than, say, certain subreddits.

throwoutway 3y ago

> attacked by the far right Can we stop labeling everyhing you disagree with or anyone who disagrees with your world view as "far right". By doing so, you are perpetuating a false dichotonmy when there is a diverse political spectrum. Also, leftists attack forums as well