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I'm saying this isn't 'abuse', much of the time and that manual intervention alone is not evidence of abuse or even of something going wrong. The assumption the

by pvg 2y ago

I'm saying this isn't 'abuse', much of the time and that manual intervention alone is not evidence of abuse or even of something going wrong. The assumption the flagging must be ideological itself tends to be strongly coloured by the views of the assumer.

Tadpole9181 2y ago
I'm not saying the manual intervention is evidence of abuse, I'm saying HN moderation is working as intended and abuse being mitigated does not mean abuse was not attempted, or even partially successful. As a response to them saying that just because a bad actor was thwarted, they aren't a bad actor. A caught thief is a thief all the same. I personally believe the flagging of these posts is abuse, though. I don't have analytics or a need to meet a criteria of proof, but I do have common sense and an awareness of how this cult following works. The guy [Musk] did a Nazi salute on stage for God's sake, I'm not a fool as to what kind of crowd that attracts... I'm a fool in other ways, naturally!
- pvg 2y ago
  I think 'common sense' can be deeply deceptive in high-dudgeon situations and this is is pretty high on the dudgeonmeter. There's tremendous fatigue with repetitive current events stories and their generally low-quality threads and that was there long before the latest storyburst. Here's an example: When Trump was shot, flaggers nuked pretty much every instance of the story off the front page. It wasn't corrected till the next day. Do you think it's likely Nazi sympathizers did that? Or ideologues of some kind? It's hard to imagine what kind. Much more likely, just people thinking 'oh god, not more of this shit, not here', whatever their other views. The other thing is, you're indirectly/unintentionally saying dang has been straight up lying to us about the nature of these flags (i.e. that there's no obvious evidence of brigading, etc) for days. I'm sure he makes mistakes, has biases conscious and unconscious like the rest of us but I don't think he presiding over the place perched on a throne of lies.
  - Tadpole9181 2y ago
    I don't really understand how you're misconstrueing what I'm saying. I didn't say there's brigading. I didn't say dang is biased or "on a throne of lies". I said he's clearly explained how the system works and it's operating as intended, but that the intended system has flaws. And that the topic invokes bad faith flagging, which leverages those flaws. I admit I was shitty to them a week or two ago calling them "complicit" for the effect of the flaws, but that was just me being shitty and I have not said that HN mods are doing something wrong here. I just defended them all repeatedly? Let me be excruciatingly clear: Dang and the team have done a great job all things considered, despite what disappointments I outlined above. It's hard, unappreciated work, and their communication has been helpful. WRT to the attempted parallel: some submissions are flagged for good reason. Hell, this post should be flagged because it's a duplicate. But I'm not fool enough to not understand the context of these discussions. And, once again, the context is that a saluting, meming gamer Nazi billionaire is achieving the libertarian dream dismantling the US government using the fascist dream of zero oversight executive overreach using AI wielding, racist tech bros fresh out of college. Seriously, I couldn't think of a better targeted demographic to abuse the flagging system to suppress any negative coverage of this being bad in our community. If your goal here is to convince me that this whole situation has NOT been exacerbated by those abusing their flag privilege, you should honestly just move on. Not even dang has insight into the mens rea of a flag and I've had the displeasure of many of my peers being this particular brand of nasty.
    - pvg 2y ago
      dang has insight into the mens rea Neither do you though? It's just not at all obvious to me, other than 'I think it's nazis because nazis are bad' (and nazis are, without question, really bad - no argument there), why one ought to assume that this is nazis, but every other time it happens (nearly daily) it's something else. you should honestly just move on done.
      - Tadpole9181 2y ago
        The fact you reduce everything I say to absurdity or some complete falsehood is against HN rules too, if we're being pedantic. Maybe you could stop? I don't think it's authoritarians "because Nazis are bad". I think it's authoritarians because it's a story about authoritarians having authoritarians do bad authoritarian things and there are a disproportionate ratio of authoritarians or authoritarian sympathizers on this forum (and our careers) and this action is blatantly inline with the behavior of the petty authoritarians who are trying to seize power and I'm not an idiot? And, no, this isn't exclusive to this scenario. And, shockingly, there are more than two scenarios on this planet. You're not being clever, you're being dismissive and rude.

by pvg 2y ago

Tadpole9181 2y ago

I'm not saying the manual intervention is evidence of abuse, I'm saying HN moderation is working as intended and abuse being mitigated does not mean abuse was not attempted, or even partially successful. As a response to them saying that just because a bad actor was thwarted, they aren't a bad actor. A caught thief is a thief all the same. I personally believe the flagging of these posts is abuse, though. I don't have analytics or a need to meet a criteria of proof, but I do have common sense and an awareness of how this cult following works. The guy [Musk] did a Nazi salute on stage for God's sake, I'm not a fool as to what kind of crowd that attracts... I'm a fool in other ways, naturally!

pvg 2y ago
I think 'common sense' can be deeply deceptive in high-dudgeon situations and this is is pretty high on the dudgeonmeter. There's tremendous fatigue with repetitive current events stories and their generally low-quality threads and that was there long before the latest storyburst. Here's an example: When Trump was shot, flaggers nuked pretty much every instance of the story off the front page. It wasn't corrected till the next day. Do you think it's likely Nazi sympathizers did that? Or ideologues of some kind? It's hard to imagine what kind. Much more likely, just people thinking 'oh god, not more of this shit, not here', whatever their other views. The other thing is, you're indirectly/unintentionally saying dang has been straight up lying to us about the nature of these flags (i.e. that there's no obvious evidence of brigading, etc) for days. I'm sure he makes mistakes, has biases conscious and unconscious like the rest of us but I don't think he presiding over the place perched on a throne of lies.
- Tadpole9181 2y ago
  I don't really understand how you're misconstrueing what I'm saying. I didn't say there's brigading. I didn't say dang is biased or "on a throne of lies". I said he's clearly explained how the system works and it's operating as intended, but that the intended system has flaws. And that the topic invokes bad faith flagging, which leverages those flaws. I admit I was shitty to them a week or two ago calling them "complicit" for the effect of the flaws, but that was just me being shitty and I have not said that HN mods are doing something wrong here. I just defended them all repeatedly? Let me be excruciatingly clear: Dang and the team have done a great job all things considered, despite what disappointments I outlined above. It's hard, unappreciated work, and their communication has been helpful. WRT to the attempted parallel: some submissions are flagged for good reason. Hell, this post should be flagged because it's a duplicate. But I'm not fool enough to not understand the context of these discussions. And, once again, the context is that a saluting, meming gamer Nazi billionaire is achieving the libertarian dream dismantling the US government using the fascist dream of zero oversight executive overreach using AI wielding, racist tech bros fresh out of college. Seriously, I couldn't think of a better targeted demographic to abuse the flagging system to suppress any negative coverage of this being bad in our community. If your goal here is to convince me that this whole situation has NOT been exacerbated by those abusing their flag privilege, you should honestly just move on. Not even dang has insight into the mens rea of a flag and I've had the displeasure of many of my peers being this particular brand of nasty.
  - pvg 2y ago
    dang has insight into the mens rea Neither do you though? It's just not at all obvious to me, other than 'I think it's nazis because nazis are bad' (and nazis are, without question, really bad - no argument there), why one ought to assume that this is nazis, but every other time it happens (nearly daily) it's something else. you should honestly just move on done.
    - Tadpole9181 2y ago
      The fact you reduce everything I say to absurdity or some complete falsehood is against HN rules too, if we're being pedantic. Maybe you could stop? I don't think it's authoritarians "because Nazis are bad". I think it's authoritarians because it's a story about authoritarians having authoritarians do bad authoritarian things and there are a disproportionate ratio of authoritarians or authoritarian sympathizers on this forum (and our careers) and this action is blatantly inline with the behavior of the petty authoritarians who are trying to seize power and I'm not an idiot? And, no, this isn't exclusive to this scenario. And, shockingly, there are more than two scenarios on this planet. You're not being clever, you're being dismissive and rude.