10 ms·

Hey Dang, huge fan of HN. How do you reconcile HN's political neutrality and the fact that almost every overtly political story that hits the front page about

by hersko 3y ago

Hey Dang, huge fan of HN. How do you reconcile HN's political neutrality and the fact that almost every overtly political story that hits the front page about certain subjects[1] are blatantly biased on one side? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435324

dang 3y ago
I think it's a legit concern and it worries me too. We can only go by the articles that users submit, and then only the subset we see, which is a function of (a) randomness and (b) users bringing specific cases to our attention. If there's a bias in the stories that have made HN's front page, that bias is present in the underlying data (I mean this stream of articles) to begin with. Why might that be? Well, there are a lot of possible reasons and people would most likely dispute about those as much as they do about the underlying topic. For what it's worth (which may not be much), all I can tell you is that we want deeply, and are trying hard, to be even-handed. At the same time, we're not going to apply some sort of mechanical both-sides balancing because, although it might make things superficially easier in the short term, I don't think it would be in the spirit of the site, and we don't do that about anything else. The even-handedness I'm talking about is probably easier to notice in our moderation of comments, so far, than of the articles. I feel pretty confident that we've done a good job of that [1], more than I am about the articles. Perhaps that's because there have been thousands of comments, but only a handful of frontpage articles, on the topic. One consistent lesson of HN is that you can't draw general conclusions from a handful of datapoints. It takes a lot more than that before reliable patterns show up. What matters to me is that there be principles underlying the moderation and that these get applied equally. This isn't fully achievable because there's always interpretation involved—we don't get every call right. But I think the principles are the right ones for HN (I've explained what these are in the links mentioned above), and I'm always open to hearing arguments about how to apply them more even-handedly. When people make a fair point, such as xyzelement did about the submitted URL of the OP (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39621225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39621225), we're happy to change something. Another example that sticks in my mind is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39146630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39146630 from a few weeks ago. That was about title, not URL, but the principle is the same. I don't know how satisfactory this answer can possibly be but I hope it's at least clear that I hear you and care about the question. [1] That is, when people break HN's rules in the comments, such as by posting flamebait or snark or personal attack, we flag and/or reply and/or ban irrespective of what the commenter is for or against. It might not appear that way to many readers who have strong passions on a topic, but it's not as hard to do as one might assume, especially after 10 years of practice.
- hersko 3y ago
  Thanks for the response. I guess i just don't understand why some political stories make it through, when the vast majority (like this one[1]) are rightfully flagged. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39622270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39622270
  - dang 3y ago
    If you look at the links I listed in my GP comment, I've posted quite a few explanations of how and when we turn off the flags on an article. If there's a question I haven't answered there, I'd like to know what it is.
- hayst4ck 3y ago
  Saying something is biased on one side and therefore wrong or unfair is incorrect because it denies the idea of objective truth. If there is no such thing as objective truth, then nobody has any foundation upon which to make any judgements, and therefore power alone becomes the ultimate arbiter or conflict. The idea that there is no objective truth is a core tenet of fascism. So in a "curious" place you would expect openness to new explanations, but you would also expect one-sided-ness because there is an objective truth to approach and the purpose of curiosity is to approach that truth. If there is no objective truth, there is no reason to be curious. If there is an objective truth, then there is no reason to complain about one-sided-ness because what matters is our best approximation of the truth. A quote from Yale professor of history Timothy Snyder's book: On Tyranny To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.
- beloch 3y ago
  "If there's a bias in the stories that have made HN's front page, that bias is present in the underlying data (I mean this stream of articles) to begin with" This really cannot be understated. HackerNews draws an educated demographic, which generally tends to be centrist, perhaps leaning a bit to the centre-left. Remember, this is based on demographics. Individual exceptions will occur but do not prove the rule. The uncomfortable thing about political discussions is that most (not all) of them occur over things for which there isn't a clear-cut scientific consensus. If something is truly clear cut and self evident, then it usually won't turn into a political issue. You can set up an argument that is unassailable from one viewpoint but which crumbles from another. Two people who are reasonable and logical can have stark disagreements over political issues because of how they approach the issue. When people we respect and admire express political views that do not match our own, it can be disquieting. The most important thing is to maintain respect for each other, even when we disagree. Political discussions on HackerNews usually don't descend into flame-wars, and I appreciate that. Perhaps you've hit on something important by limiting the frequency of such discussions. If they occur infrequently enough that they aren't a constant irritant, perhaps its easier for participants to keep their cool.
bawolff 3y ago
I think part of it is the current situation lends itself to more pro-gaza headlines. For starters the situation is evolving more on that front. Every new action is a potential headline for palestine. On the other hand Israel's position is much more static: They want to prevent the slaughter on oct 7 from happening again, and are using force to do so. That hasn't changed. You can't make new headlines out of it. Its probably also inherent to the fact that Israel is currently on the offensive, outside of its territory in an asymetrical urban conflict. The optics on that are always going to be bad for the state in Israel's position regardless of how justified it is. Urban conflict is always a bloody mess, same with asymetric conflicts. When israel bombs a hospital that makes a great headline. Its easy to understand and verify - hospital used to be there, now it is not. Its emotional - everyone knows in normal circumstances hospitals are supposed to be off limits. The Israeli side is hard to fit into a headline - hospital bombed after it became a military target due to use by militants, in accordance with international law and the principles of porportionality and distinction. For starters that is a mouthful to be a headline. It lacks emotional punch because now we are talking about legalese not deaths of innocets. Its hard to understand - most non experts do not know what the doctrine of porportionality& distinction is. Even if they do, we do not know in the fog of war what israel knew when targeting it and if it was reasonable at the time. Even if we did, where precisely the line is can be controversially grey. Its not like there is a huge amount of case law on this. Determing if it was legal would probably require hundreds of pages of legal argumentation. Even then, there is a whole other question of if the line international law draws is the correct one morally, which you could write a book on. Its just very hard to put all that in a news article. So i don't think it is HN's fault that most of these articles lean more anti-israel. Its just much easier to write about things from that perspective. It is much more black and white and requires much less nuance and context.
- Jensson 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Because there is no proof Hamas did that? And for some reason, sometimes, not everyone wants headlines to lie?

by hersko 3y ago

dang 3y ago

I think it's a legit concern and it worries me too. We can only go by the articles that users submit, and then only the subset we see, which is a function of (a) randomness and (b) users bringing specific cases to our attention. If there's a bias in the stories that have made HN's front page, that bias is present in the underlying data (I mean this stream of articles) to begin with. Why might that be? Well, there are a lot of possible reasons and people would most likely dispute about those as much as they do about the underlying topic. For what it's worth (which may not be much), all I can tell you is that we want deeply, and are trying hard, to be even-handed. At the same time, we're not going to apply some sort of mechanical both-sides balancing because, although it might make things superficially easier in the short term, I don't think it would be in the spirit of the site, and we don't do that about anything else. The even-handedness I'm talking about is probably easier to notice in our moderation of comments, so far, than of the articles. I feel pretty confident that we've done a good job of that [1], more than I am about the articles. Perhaps that's because there have been thousands of comments, but only a handful of frontpage articles, on the topic. One consistent lesson of HN is that you can't draw general conclusions from a handful of datapoints. It takes a lot more than that before reliable patterns show up. What matters to me is that there be principles underlying the moderation and that these get applied equally. This isn't fully achievable because there's always interpretation involved—we don't get every call right. But I think the principles are the right ones for HN (I've explained what these are in the links mentioned above), and I'm always open to hearing arguments about how to apply them more even-handedly. When people make a fair point, such as xyzelement did about the submitted URL of the OP (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39621225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39621225), we're happy to change something. Another example that sticks in my mind is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39146630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39146630 from a few weeks ago. That was about title, not URL, but the principle is the same. I don't know how satisfactory this answer can possibly be but I hope it's at least clear that I hear you and care about the question. [1] That is, when people break HN's rules in the comments, such as by posting flamebait or snark or personal attack, we flag and/or reply and/or ban irrespective of what the commenter is for or against. It might not appear that way to many readers who have strong passions on a topic, but it's not as hard to do as one might assume, especially after 10 years of practice.

hersko 3y ago
Thanks for the response. I guess i just don't understand why some political stories make it through, when the vast majority (like this one[1]) are rightfully flagged. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39622270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39622270
- dang 3y ago
  If you look at the links I listed in my GP comment, I've posted quite a few explanations of how and when we turn off the flags on an article. If there's a question I haven't answered there, I'd like to know what it is.
hayst4ck 3y ago
Saying something is biased on one side and therefore wrong or unfair is incorrect because it denies the idea of objective truth. If there is no such thing as objective truth, then nobody has any foundation upon which to make any judgements, and therefore power alone becomes the ultimate arbiter or conflict. The idea that there is no objective truth is a core tenet of fascism. So in a "curious" place you would expect openness to new explanations, but you would also expect one-sided-ness because there is an objective truth to approach and the purpose of curiosity is to approach that truth. If there is no objective truth, there is no reason to be curious. If there is an objective truth, then there is no reason to complain about one-sided-ness because what matters is our best approximation of the truth. A quote from Yale professor of history Timothy Snyder's book: On Tyranny To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.
beloch 3y ago
"If there's a bias in the stories that have made HN's front page, that bias is present in the underlying data (I mean this stream of articles) to begin with" This really cannot be understated. HackerNews draws an educated demographic, which generally tends to be centrist, perhaps leaning a bit to the centre-left. Remember, this is based on demographics. Individual exceptions will occur but do not prove the rule. The uncomfortable thing about political discussions is that most (not all) of them occur over things for which there isn't a clear-cut scientific consensus. If something is truly clear cut and self evident, then it usually won't turn into a political issue. You can set up an argument that is unassailable from one viewpoint but which crumbles from another. Two people who are reasonable and logical can have stark disagreements over political issues because of how they approach the issue. When people we respect and admire express political views that do not match our own, it can be disquieting. The most important thing is to maintain respect for each other, even when we disagree. Political discussions on HackerNews usually don't descend into flame-wars, and I appreciate that. Perhaps you've hit on something important by limiting the frequency of such discussions. If they occur infrequently enough that they aren't a constant irritant, perhaps its easier for participants to keep their cool.

bawolff 3y ago

I think part of it is the current situation lends itself to more pro-gaza headlines. For starters the situation is evolving more on that front. Every new action is a potential headline for palestine. On the other hand Israel's position is much more static: They want to prevent the slaughter on oct 7 from happening again, and are using force to do so. That hasn't changed. You can't make new headlines out of it. Its probably also inherent to the fact that Israel is currently on the offensive, outside of its territory in an asymetrical urban conflict. The optics on that are always going to be bad for the state in Israel's position regardless of how justified it is. Urban conflict is always a bloody mess, same with asymetric conflicts. When israel bombs a hospital that makes a great headline. Its easy to understand and verify - hospital used to be there, now it is not. Its emotional - everyone knows in normal circumstances hospitals are supposed to be off limits. The Israeli side is hard to fit into a headline - hospital bombed after it became a military target due to use by militants, in accordance with international law and the principles of porportionality and distinction. For starters that is a mouthful to be a headline. It lacks emotional punch because now we are talking about legalese not deaths of innocets. Its hard to understand - most non experts do not know what the doctrine of porportionality& distinction is. Even if they do, we do not know in the fog of war what israel knew when targeting it and if it was reasonable at the time. Even if we did, where precisely the line is can be controversially grey. Its not like there is a huge amount of case law on this. Determing if it was legal would probably require hundreds of pages of legal argumentation. Even then, there is a whole other question of if the line international law draws is the correct one morally, which you could write a book on. Its just very hard to put all that in a news article. So i don't think it is HN's fault that most of these articles lean more anti-israel. Its just much easier to write about things from that perspective. It is much more black and white and requires much less nuance and context.

Jensson 3y ago
[flagged]
- hef19898 3y ago
  Because there is no proof Hamas did that? And for some reason, sometimes, not everyone wants headlines to lie?