3 ms·

Is it me or mods are actively hiding everything that is critical of the current admin? This post is 6 hours late, 308 points and at the bottom of the 3rd page.

Is it me or mods are actively hiding everything that is critical of the current admin? This post is 6 hours late, 308 points and at the bottom of the 3rd page. This is not the first post that is either flagged or just made invisible. Is HN still a place we can trust?

et-al 2y ago
I trust dang. I also believe there are a bunch of Musk fanboys on this site that would flag this. Or people who don’t want to understand the implications of what’s going on and avoid anything that’s “political”.
- Balgair 2y ago
  Knowing how petty Elon is with Diablo and PoE, I do not at all put it past him to have some bots/cheap labor just flag anything about him. I also trust dang Don't know how to square these thing either, though
  - dang 2y ago
    It's not bots flagging these things, it's regular users. Unless the regular users are bots, which seems unlikely. When there's a major ongoing topic like this one, especially when it's divisive, the flags tend to come from a combination of (1) users who flag one-sidedly for what appear to be political reasons, and (2) users who don't think the story is on-topic for HN, whether because it's too sensational / flame-prone, too repetitive, or both. The first is a bad reason to flag and the second is a good reason. When we notice users flagging repeatedly for bad reasons, we take their flagging privileges away.
    - Balgair 2y ago
      Hey dang, thanks for the reply. I didn't know you take the flagging away. That's not a bad idea. I've been seeing you defend yourself all over the place these days. Sorry to make you feel like you had to do that here too. My comment was more one of confusion, to clarify. Reading your comments these last few weeks, I trust in your decisions and those of the rest of the mods. HN is a really good place because of you all. But I also know Elon is super petty/crazy and doing some monkey business is not above him. And yes, I know that sounds very conspiracy theory of me based on your comment here. Suffice to say, maybe I'm just reacting to the sea change in HN participation and doing some 'self protection'. I like HN and then I recognize this flagging behavior on mostly just two men. Is there more flagging? Yes, but that's 'background' to me. These things don't square to my mind, so I go off to conspiracy land. Either way, my lizard brain is triggered and whether I like it or not, I can't help feeling 'bad/danger'. Maybe some self-work is needed. Still, thanks a ton for all the time and the effort yo and the rest of the mod team put in here. I really appreciate it.
    - oa335 2y ago
      I agree with your moderation style generally, but > Unless the regular users are bots, which seems unlikely Why do you believe it’s unlikely? Are these regular users whose activity predates GPT3? Personally, since LLMs became commercially available I’ve just assumed that at least 50% of comments on the internet are bots.
      - dang 2y ago
        Yes, many have been around for years and years.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  I also trust dang, but the “Elon has built cool companies so I’m going to set aside what critical thinking skills I have and put my trust in him and Trump and forget that Trump Is an inveterate liar and Elon has been saying shit for a long time now” is really getting to me. I expect that from Reddit or Fox News watchers. I expect higher order thinking from HN and it’s pretty disappointing.
  - 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
    > I expect higher order thinking from HN Uh, don't. HN doesn't block dumb people from joining the site and commenting.
gnomesteel 2y ago
Yes, they're all being hidden. I've yet to see a good reason why.
- cassepipe 2y ago
  Please see my response to parent
- tim333 2y ago
  (copied from an earlier comment) There are at least 60 recent DOGE stories on HN with comments on. I guess people get a bit DOGEd out. It's probably part of the Trump/Musk strategy. 'Flood the zone' with so many things people can't follow it. (on zone flooding https://youtu.be/iTSgL_R1CC4 https://youtu.be/iTSgL_R1CC4)
cassepipe 2y ago
I see you are new here. It's not about being political or not, it's about whether this is going to end up in a flamewar or not. Here are the guidelines : https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Moderation is decentralized, downvoted comments tend to disappear. Flagging is a power people who have a lot of karma have, if you think are one of them you can vouch (unflag) for a comment. There is one mod, dang Here are the moderator last comments so you can have idea of the work he is doing: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang
- kccoder 2y ago
  It would be so uncivil to have a conversation about how the US govt is being carelessly lit on fire because it might lead to a flamewar.
  - 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
    If you're going to have emotions we'll have to ask you to leave
  - lolinder 2y ago
    There is no conversation here. There's one thread near the top that tries to talk about the actual vulnerability, the rest is knee-jerk snark. I totally understand why people are knee-jerking, but it's not a conversation and it doesn't belong on HN. We have other forums for knee-jerk snark. I'll be happy to see another DOGE post here the next time there's a topic that has enough meat for a useful conversation to come out of it. In the meantime, I suspect that dang just left this here to avoid the appearance of silencing the topic. I hope that people who see this come away better understanding why so many of these threads get flagged to death.
- timeon 2y ago
  I wonder if site being hacked belongs to hacker news.
  - 2y ago
dannersy 2y ago
I've suspected the same when people are critical of AI.
whamlastxmas 2y ago
It’s not mods. Dang and his team are phenomenally fair. It’s users flagging it because we’re massively tired of this content and if I want to read it and hear endless thoughtless comments, I’ll go to Reddit.
dang 2y ago
I've been answering this a lot lately. Here are some links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43019507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43019507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43003751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43003751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389 (<-- principles listed here) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42979382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42979382 If you take a look at those and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it. Trust as you please, but we're moderating HN the same way we always have. Edit: Actually we wouldn't expect or ask anyone to trust in the first place. I do think it's reasonable to ask regular users to familiarize themselves with the principles by which we moderate the site. Then if you see something that doesn't fit those principles, or if you want to make a case for different principles, we have something to discuss. These principles go back a long time and have held up well in terms of preserving HN for its intended purpose over the years. If you (or anyone) want to familiarize yourself with them, see the link I marked above. It contains a partial list, and pointers to lots of past explanations.
- cowfriend 2y ago
  Going to defend dang here. These posts have a high political index, which given America's current culture wars tends to bring out the kind of behavior which none of us want on HN. It's a damn tough balancing act. Also, look at my post history, I'm pretty strongly anti-DOGE. I'm defending Dang because I love HN and appreciate what he is doing under extremely tough conditions.
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
A group of users flags it all but dang has done a good job of overriding it lately. I'd still like if threads indicated whether or not flags were turned off. Dang must be tired of answering these questions
nomdep 2y ago
Those post are flagged because many of us do not want to see ANYTHING about US politics in here, no matter if it’s dressed up as a technical article
- tayo42 2y ago
  why don't you click "hide"?

et-al 2y ago

I trust dang. I also believe there are a bunch of Musk fanboys on this site that would flag this. Or people who don’t want to understand the implications of what’s going on and avoid anything that’s “political”.

Balgair 2y ago
Knowing how petty Elon is with Diablo and PoE, I do not at all put it past him to have some bots/cheap labor just flag anything about him. I also trust dang Don't know how to square these thing either, though
- dang 2y ago
  It's not bots flagging these things, it's regular users. Unless the regular users are bots, which seems unlikely. When there's a major ongoing topic like this one, especially when it's divisive, the flags tend to come from a combination of (1) users who flag one-sidedly for what appear to be political reasons, and (2) users who don't think the story is on-topic for HN, whether because it's too sensational / flame-prone, too repetitive, or both. The first is a bad reason to flag and the second is a good reason. When we notice users flagging repeatedly for bad reasons, we take their flagging privileges away.
  - Balgair 2y ago
    Hey dang, thanks for the reply. I didn't know you take the flagging away. That's not a bad idea. I've been seeing you defend yourself all over the place these days. Sorry to make you feel like you had to do that here too. My comment was more one of confusion, to clarify. Reading your comments these last few weeks, I trust in your decisions and those of the rest of the mods. HN is a really good place because of you all. But I also know Elon is super petty/crazy and doing some monkey business is not above him. And yes, I know that sounds very conspiracy theory of me based on your comment here. Suffice to say, maybe I'm just reacting to the sea change in HN participation and doing some 'self protection'. I like HN and then I recognize this flagging behavior on mostly just two men. Is there more flagging? Yes, but that's 'background' to me. These things don't square to my mind, so I go off to conspiracy land. Either way, my lizard brain is triggered and whether I like it or not, I can't help feeling 'bad/danger'. Maybe some self-work is needed. Still, thanks a ton for all the time and the effort yo and the rest of the mod team put in here. I really appreciate it.
  - oa335 2y ago
    I agree with your moderation style generally, but > Unless the regular users are bots, which seems unlikely Why do you believe it’s unlikely? Are these regular users whose activity predates GPT3? Personally, since LLMs became commercially available I’ve just assumed that at least 50% of comments on the internet are bots.
    - dang 2y ago
      Yes, many have been around for years and years.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
I also trust dang, but the “Elon has built cool companies so I’m going to set aside what critical thinking skills I have and put my trust in him and Trump and forget that Trump Is an inveterate liar and Elon has been saying shit for a long time now” is really getting to me. I expect that from Reddit or Fox News watchers. I expect higher order thinking from HN and it’s pretty disappointing.
- 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
  > I expect higher order thinking from HN Uh, don't. HN doesn't block dumb people from joining the site and commenting.

gnomesteel 2y ago

Yes, they're all being hidden. I've yet to see a good reason why.

cassepipe 2y ago
Please see my response to parent
tim333 2y ago
(copied from an earlier comment) There are at least 60 recent DOGE stories on HN with comments on. I guess people get a bit DOGEd out. It's probably part of the Trump/Musk strategy. 'Flood the zone' with so many things people can't follow it. (on zone flooding https://youtu.be/iTSgL_R1CC4 https://youtu.be/iTSgL_R1CC4)

cassepipe 2y ago

I see you are new here. It's not about being political or not, it's about whether this is going to end up in a flamewar or not. Here are the guidelines : https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Moderation is decentralized, downvoted comments tend to disappear. Flagging is a power people who have a lot of karma have, if you think are one of them you can vouch (unflag) for a comment. There is one mod, dang Here are the moderator last comments so you can have idea of the work he is doing: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang

kccoder 2y ago
It would be so uncivil to have a conversation about how the US govt is being carelessly lit on fire because it might lead to a flamewar.
- 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
  If you're going to have emotions we'll have to ask you to leave
- lolinder 2y ago
  There is no conversation here. There's one thread near the top that tries to talk about the actual vulnerability, the rest is knee-jerk snark. I totally understand why people are knee-jerking, but it's not a conversation and it doesn't belong on HN. We have other forums for knee-jerk snark. I'll be happy to see another DOGE post here the next time there's a topic that has enough meat for a useful conversation to come out of it. In the meantime, I suspect that dang just left this here to avoid the appearance of silencing the topic. I hope that people who see this come away better understanding why so many of these threads get flagged to death.
timeon 2y ago
I wonder if site being hacked belongs to hacker news.
- 2y ago

dannersy 2y ago

I've suspected the same when people are critical of AI.

whamlastxmas 2y ago

It’s not mods. Dang and his team are phenomenally fair. It’s users flagging it because we’re massively tired of this content and if I want to read it and hear endless thoughtless comments, I’ll go to Reddit.

dang 2y ago

I've been answering this a lot lately. Here are some links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43019507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43019507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43003751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43003751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389 (<-- principles listed here) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42979382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42979382 If you take a look at those and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it. Trust as you please, but we're moderating HN the same way we always have. Edit: Actually we wouldn't expect or ask anyone to trust in the first place. I do think it's reasonable to ask regular users to familiarize themselves with the principles by which we moderate the site. Then if you see something that doesn't fit those principles, or if you want to make a case for different principles, we have something to discuss. These principles go back a long time and have held up well in terms of preserving HN for its intended purpose over the years. If you (or anyone) want to familiarize yourself with them, see the link I marked above. It contains a partial list, and pointers to lots of past explanations.

cowfriend 2y ago
Going to defend dang here. These posts have a high political index, which given America's current culture wars tends to bring out the kind of behavior which none of us want on HN. It's a damn tough balancing act. Also, look at my post history, I'm pretty strongly anti-DOGE. I'm defending Dang because I love HN and appreciate what he is doing under extremely tough conditions.

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

A group of users flags it all but dang has done a good job of overriding it lately. I'd still like if threads indicated whether or not flags were turned off. Dang must be tired of answering these questions

nomdep 2y ago

Those post are flagged because many of us do not want to see ANYTHING about US politics in here, no matter if it’s dressed up as a technical article

tayo42 2y ago
why don't you click "hide"?