6 ms·
Ask HN: Is HN Censoring Posts?
I saw a post about employees of Musk's companies and their reactions to his Nazi salute at the inauguration. The rise of fascism in America is definitely an interesting and pertinent question, but the post was insta-flagged into oblivion.
Is HN suppressing negative posts about Elon Musk?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- toomuchtodo 2y agoIt appears HN users are flagging to suppress posts, yes, not HN or its mods. https://github.com/vitoplantamura/HackerNewsRemovals https://github.com/vitoplantamura/HackerNewsRemovals might be helpful for tracking some of this, feel free to bookmark. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39231537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39231537 is helpful to understand some mechanics of the above. Let "You shouldn't flag things just because you don't like them, but you should flag them if they go against the site guidelines." be your guide. (as pvg's links to dang's comments mention, this is not HN/mod action; this is user sourced moderation activity)
- shortrounddev2 2y agoI suppose HN generally doesn't want political posts here, with exceptions
- dcminter 2y agoThat's absolutely the kind of thing I would flag and I'm very much a left winger. The posting guidelines⁰ explicitly say: "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." You don't need a conspiracy to account for this kind of thing disappearing swiftly. ⁰ https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- memesarecool 2y agoI'm not a left winger just anti-fascist; and I posted the question because I am curious about the thoughts of the employees. I don't want to discuss the gesture. There's a lot of discussion here about work environment and career decisions and this is what I was asking about. I think it was a valid question and a shame it got self-censored by part of the community. edit: this was the OP btw https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42781509 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42781509
- dcminter 2y agoYou wouldn't find out, you'd just get to see a lot of people talking across each other. Those kinds of destructive conversations then colour the other non-political discussions.
- computerthings 2y ago> Those kinds of destructive conversations then colour the other non-political discussions. How so? I honestly don't see what mechanism could lead to that. Are you saying that people would remember user names they disagreed with on political topics they care deeply about, hold a grudge, and then that would "color" their reply to someone (who is their "political enemy") about code etc.? I mean, I get the idea that people might be petty and personal, but how would they express that in an non-political topic? What is this "coloring"? Can you give an example? I do see the opposite being possible, easily: if people aren't allowed to discuss something like Elon's Hitler salute in a dedicated topic freely, then they'll probably use the opportunity to bring it up in other topics about something else Musk/SpaceX/Tesla did. I see this all the time, for every topic where I'm bothered that discussion is flagged, it's a.) still discussed by people arriving there via search, and b.) brought up in orders of magnitude more unrelated threads, usually garnering approval rather than downvotes. It's HackerNews after all, not StartTheWizardAndClickOKNews after all.
- computerthings 2y agoThey do the same hand waving in the news mostly. They are not "covering" it any more someone saying "install malware, it's fine!" would be "covering" the subject of computer security. They're covering it up more than covering it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42777716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42777716 ^ And do you think this is covered in the news? Of course it is, the same is true for thousands of other topics discussed last year. You don't need a conspiracy to apply the generic verbiage in the guidelines arbitrarily, just double standards.
- pvg 2y agoYou can see some recent mod commentary on this. It's more or less how HN works and is supposed to work: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42777298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42777298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42775648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42775648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42775535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42775535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42775519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42775519
- memesarecool 2y agoThere's a lot of discussion here about work environment and startup culture and I thought it was a valid question to current SpaceX and Tesla employees. I am genuinely curious and thought HN would be the best place to ask this and get some genuine answers.
- pvg 2y agoThere isn't anything wrong with the question and the curiosity, it's just that lots of people (in my view, correctly) don't feel it's likely to produce interesting discussion and interesting discussion is what HN is ostensibly for.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dttze 2y agoSo, avoid all transparency and accountability around moderation and then reference vague and subjective terms to dismiss those who rightly complain.
- pvg 2y agoWhat is the transparency and accountability that ought to happen here that hasn't, specifically?
- 2y ago
- LinuxBender 2y ago[flagged]
- memesarecool 2y agoThat is a roman salute, yes. And a swastika is also a buddhist symbol.
- LinuxBender 2y ago[flagged]
- licebmi__at__ 2y agoI bet a German judge will buy your Roman salute explanation after vouching for a far right party and tweeting some great replacement theories. I mean, why are certain people always finding themselves in situations where it could be implied they are nazis? Why can't they one day stumble getting out of bed and tweet by accident something supporting the Black Panthers? Why is it always the same side?
- josefresco 2y agoOP: I just submitted a similar question, with a neutral title. While I think your topic is valid, the biased headline probably contributed to the flags.
- memesarecool 2y agoJust to clarify: I'm OP of the post asking the question being discussed; I did not submit this question about censorship.
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoDid you see how the discussion went on the first submission of the video/clip/story? Not so well. There isn't much room for discussion or any real 'question' to get into on that particular story. Many, perhaps most, would rather not lend validation to it and move on. And the rest, well, as mentioned, the discussion devolves into insults and weird 'othersideism' and well, doesn't go anywhere. An alternative option is also you're welcome to bring it up/seek to address it further, or even flag, the numerous Musk/Telsa/X related stories that come up around here elsewhere.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Zigurd 2y agoI would readily believe "Not so well" but there is over a trillion dollars in enterprise value based largely on a cult of an unstable personality. The underlying business has stopped growing which almost always signals a collapse in valuation in high-growth tech companies. Stock market bubbles that depend on temporary manias about whole tech sectors, like routers or e-commerce aren't that big. If BMW somehow got a valuation of over a trillion and their CEO was behaving erratically and using ketamine, that would be a big topic of discussion. It's the bomb that could blow a big hole in tech, in general.
- JumpinJack_Cash 2y ago> > It's the bomb that could blow a big hole in tech, in general. It already has in some sense, during the 20 years tenure of Bill Gates at the top of the Forbes 400, myself (and I suppose many other people) considered him the asshole dealer you'd have to bear with in order to get the goods and get high. But with some spells of being the total opposite of asshole and for example allowing piracy for those wise enough to exploit it. Same for however Bezos was at #1 . This guy is like 1000x the asshole and is not bringing any quality of life to people. All his companies are performance art. 2005 Mercedeses are more durable and better designed than 2025 Teslas, some would say better looking (especialy the interiors) the Self Driving that should have been the first revolution in automotive since the Model T never came about. SpaceX is performance art too, it's contentious that even African Nations would be better off using satellite Internes such as Starlink as opposed to invest in mobile 5G which has been working real well historically as a strategy when they ditched landline in the 90s And quite frankly in the developed world nobody or almost nobody needs Starlink. I for one lost faith in tech and I am trying to enjoy the variety of activities that a human can do today across millions of domains and are possible thanks to the tech progress UP TO NOW, from now on the progress will become less and less exponential . We'll never discover something more revolutionary than fire or the wheel anymore. It seems like Peter Thiel was right with his theory about stasis in tech but ironically his buddy is one of the worst offender in that sense, even more ironic is that the very big leap of recent years (the mRNA vaccine which solved to COVID crisis) is barely talked about and the BS stuff promoted by Musk and Musk-a-like assholes is flying to the moon both financially and media exposure wise. Aahh it's no longer worth getting mad about this shit, logging off to test the limits of my new mountain bike, a 300 year old tech that I never mastered though, so it's new for ME and that's the only thing that matters. As for the automotive side I'll keep enjoying my 2005 Mercedes and avoid being fooled by the hype pushed by conmen.
- dayyan 2y agoWe ain't playing that game anymore.
- 9283409232 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- teekert 2y agoI'm flagging it on LinkedIn, here I don't care so much, I can dive in when I want (but I don't really), it's not in the way of me finding assignments. Anyway, to me it's obvious Elon was overly enthusiastic and emotional ("My heart goes out to you"), as he was when that astronaut chided him. To some it's not. I guess we know when he keeps saluting in this way. Until that time, cool down everyone.
- nojvek 2y agoI use hn.algolia.com and flagging doesn't seem to have an effect. I still see top voted and commented stories. HN works based on flagging. If a few users flag a story, it gets hidden. The algorithm errs on the side of being safe than sorry.