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Sometimes things I post get flagged by users and I get it, fair enough. This time I can only think of malicious reasons. The only people who I can imagine flag
by consumer451 2y ago
Sometimes things I post get flagged by users and I get it, fair enough. This time I can only think of malicious reasons.
The only people who I can imagine flagging this post are Meta PR, or users who are bringing their politics into a non-political post. If anyone has any other reasonable explanations, I would love to hear them.
Looks like the title was edited, original title: Facebook Is Censoring 404 Media Stories About Facebook's Censorship
- dang 2y agoI didn't see any such pattern in the data. It was flagged by quite a few users, none of whom showed any obvious pattern like affiliation with a company or a political slant. (Edit: I mean none of the ones I looked at. There were too many to look at them all.) We can only guess why users flag things. In this case, I don't have a good guess, other than that the article title is baity, so I replaced it with more neutral language from the subtitle, and (partly) rolled back the flags. The flaggers may be correct, in any case, because this thread is noticeably terrible.
- consumer451 2y agoThanks for looking into it. And yeah, I thought that this topic would have garnered a better discussion.
- spencerflem 2y agoI'm surprised you'd think that - Facebook moderation changes and the same tired back and forth about 'free speech' have been some of the worst threads for me.
- mixmax 2y agomy guess would be that it's because you have to sign up to read the article.
- consumer451 2y agoThat's actually a fair point. The good thing is that archive.is works on their site now.
- dang 2y agoYes, although it's strangely inconsistent. Usually I see that but occasionally I don't. (nice to see you still commenting here btw!)
- mixmax 2y agohey, thanks for remembering the oldtimers!! I check in often, but don't comment much anymore.
- ryandrake 2y ago> We can only guess why users flag things. I'm sure you've considered this feature, but since flagging is such a heavyweight (in terms of ranking impact) activity, shouldn't a flagger need to at least articulate (via text or a drop-down menu) why they are flagging it? Even vague choices like "Site guideline violation," "Spam," "Astroturfing," "Political flame bait" might offer some of the missing insight.
- dang 2y agoI've always resisted that, but could be persuaded. Not sure we'd get the true reasons though.
- ajb 2y agoWhat are your concerns with that? If it's overhead for the flagger, they could be presented with a single multi choice question, eg: What most deserves flagging: a)item title b) item content c) hn discussion d) something else With different users presented with different questions to build up a picture. Flags could be recorded even if the question isn't answered, but with you reserving the right to weight ones without answers less.
- dang 2y agoMainly the bureaucratic nature of it. Preserving HN's minimalism has been a priority because it's the kind of thing that's so easily lost; like a frog boiling itself.
- ryandrake 2y agoYea, I get the hesitance to invest in this. Nobody is going to select/admit reasons like "Because flagging is a mega-downvote and I don't like this story getting attention," even if it's the real reason. We don't know how accurate or actionable Slashdot's drop-down choice moderation was, either. Even if people are honest about their intentions, what is actionable? Not much I guess.