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Ask HN: Who Are the HN Censors?
If we look through "new" we see lots of stories that are already Dead. For some, there's no obvious reason why they needed to be killed (as opposed to just being not voted up). For example:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41025897
So who are these users going through the New submissions and Flagging stories? Shouldn't they at least have a daily limit, or be charged some karma points, or something?
- slater 2y agoDang, and some other admins, and a few aLgOriTHmS
- talldayo 2y agoThere are more users flagging things than algorithms and admins combined, I'd argue. The only things I see get auto-flagged are accounts that have likely been tagged as spammers on the server-side.
- AlbertCory 2y agoIf the stats were published, we'd know that for sure.
- slater 2y agoAlso, from the guidelines: "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- AlbertCory 2y agoThe first rule of censorship is: we don't talk about censorship.
- slater 2y agoGood thing none of this is censorship, then.
- AlbertCory 2y agoWhat do you call it?
- corinroyal 2y agoModeration.
- AlbertCory 2y ago[flagged]
- r721 2y agoI think stories which are marked "[dead]" right after posting (and not "[flagged] [dead]") were killed by algorithm - I guess possible reasons are shadow-banned user, shadow-banned domain, "bad" IP address, ...
- nullindividual 2y agoCensorship assumes you have the constitutional right to free speech on this platform. You don't.
- AlbertCory 2y ago[flagged]
- nullindividual 2y agoThis isn't censorship. That's the poor assumption being made.
- AlbertCory 2y ago> This isn't censorship a bold assertion. Care to explain what it is, then?
- mikequinlan 2y agoYou are free to post anything you want on YOUR OWN website (assuming you live someplace that has freedom of speech). You aren't free to post anything you want on SOMEONE ELSE's website.
- AlbertCory 2y agoSo who are the Frequent Flaggers?
- nullindividual 2y agoThey're posts that don't follow the HN guidelines. You know, The Rules.
- basementcat 2y agoCareful, you wouldn’t want this post to get flagged, would you?
- ThrowawayR2 2y ago([EDIT] Mere speculation but) The user account for the example you use has a history of self-promotional posting for that site (all of the postings for a site whose domain is denominations come from the user named denominations? Not very subtle.) and a couple of low quality comments. Seems like a legitimate [dead] by the HN moderators to me.
- AlbertCory 2y agoSo it was you?
- ThrowawayR2 2y agoAs others have pointed out, [dead] without [flagged] means that HN moderators killed the post. And, the last time I checked, I am not a moderator.
- not_your_vase 2y agoMaybe you haven't checked it recently enough. At this time and age truly everything is possible, maybe now you are a mod.
- AlbertCory 2y agoI do have the ability to flag and vouch. I'm pretty sure if there were a Leaderboard for that, I'd be WAY down the list.
- AlbertCory 2y agoYou didn't answer the question.
- ThrowawayR2 2y agoNo problem, I'll simplify it for you: it was not me. [EDIT removed unnecessary sarcasm]
- AlbertCory 2y ago[flagged] LOL The responses could have been reasonable and calm, like OP was, e.g. 1) You know, he might have something there. Maybe we should be more transparent about the ways we moderate stuff. -- OR -- 2) Let's just circle the wagons and attack this person with everything we have, except the actual data he asked for. This IS a little club, after all. It's too bad that you choose (2).