4 ms·

This comment section has turned into something of a circle, it's cool to be mad nd all, but there was a comment expressing doubt at the details, wonder about a

by j-bos 2y ago

This comment section has turned into something of a circle, it's cool to be mad nd all, but there was a comment expressing doubt at the details, wonder about a reason other than those stated, and asking if anyone independently verified, as I clicked it the comment was flagged to oblivion. No opportunity to engage with that viewpoint.

sunaookami 2y ago
There are certain topics that you can't discuss on Hacker News reasonably and social media is one of them.
- bluebarbet 2y ago
  Politics in general. Because everyone has an opinion, often based on their values rather than cold facts, and people do not like their values being questioned. The discussion is more civil than on other forums, but the difference is not night and day. Disappointing.
  - AlecSchueler 2y ago
    I generally agree with no politics on here but the DOGE stuff is very much tech news.
Liquidor 2y ago
HN is always a mess when the subject contains Musk, Trump, Google, browsers or social media platforms in general. I don't mind the slight political aspects of things, but reading a ton of hate and "I already deleted X" (pun intended) and "Just use Y other platform" (that no normal user can figure out) comments is just uninteresting and should stay on Reddit or wherever these nonproductive comments fit into. I'd love to hear more about this case, the technical aspects and the follow-ups/investigations. Let's focus on that, no? Maybe it's just me.
- t43562 2y ago
  You get to moderate up or down. Otherwise people say what they want.
  - jeroenhd 2y ago
    The biggest exception to that is dead/shadow banned accounts. Requiring showdead (without much of an explanation what that is) to see some heavily-downvoted comments makes it rather difficult to engage with some people. Then again, I rarely feel the need to engage with dead accounts. In terms of moderation, you also get to flag/vouch posts, so moderation isn't entirely binary.
lenkite 2y ago
[flagged]
- pjc50 2y ago
  Everything political gets downvoted, from either side, but you're going to need better evidence than Musk and rumors for this fraud. (There probably is some fraud! There is in any large money handling system! Japan had a problem with elderly people claiming pensions after they'd died, for example. It's just that you need a better standard of evidence before cutting off money that people are legally entitled to, because otherwise the fraud detection process is going to have false positives.)
  - lenkite 2y ago
    Being down-voted is OK, but posts being flagged and removed for posting factual news is not. You will need to define your threshold for standard of evidence. If you automatically disbelieve everything on doge.gov, then there is nothing one can do to convince you. You have chosen to shut your eyes. Please note: I am not an American citizen. As for "rumours", when I was a junior developer working in a service company in Bangalore over 15 years ago, developing tax filing software for an American state, during a test run on live data, I filed bug-tickets for duplicate SSN, SSN's with folks over 150 years of age, obviously spurious unemployment claims, etc. All of them were closed and the contractor told my manager not to file such tickets. (I am really thankful I left that line of work) These problems are actually very well-known. They really aren't "rumours". You can choose to put in a few hours or a few days of effort in talking to people and figuring this out yourself.
    - kasey_junk 2y ago
      Something can be factual and political. The guidelines suggest that political content is off topic for this site and that you should flag it. Right now there is an interesting convergence of tech, politics and general newsworthiness that is going to stress the content moderation system. But people flagging a story as obviously political is the system working as designed.
  - 2y ago
BluSyn 2y ago
Do all these commenters believe this nonsense? The conspiracy thinking has reached new peaks. Hard to take concerns of free speech seriously from people promoting platforms that routinely “moderate” any dissenting opinions (HN included). Our ability for collective sense making seems to be permanently destroyed. Two people who seem to agree on everything point-by-point then reach different conclusions on the final step. Its bewildering.
- 1oooqooq 2y ago
  up/down vote is the laziest form of moderation. you get what you pay for.
  - JansjoFromIkea 2y ago
    Discussion mediums just don't seem to scale very well at all. Feels like we've arrived at a point where it's either this or walls of text where you spend more time trying to figure out what a post is replying to than you'd need to keep up with the new messages coming in (i.e. loads of discords) I remember as a teen how much of a pain it was to find a good forum. Too few users and it'd feel like a graveyard, not worth checking in on often enough to build up a habit. Too many and it was impossible to keep track of anything or gain enough of an understanding of the regulars to know how to read their posts. Even the sweet spot in the middle would be frequently torn to shreds by one troll or mentally ill poster spamming the forum in a frenzy. Far preferred it to the reddit tree based vote setup but I can understand how this is what most people have settled on.
    - 1oooqooq 2y ago
      slash dot solved news comment moderation decades ago. open sourced it. nobody cares.
- hug 2y ago
  How do you mean do we "believe this nonsense"? I don't use twitter regularly, but I have two accounts for reasons. I just signed in, I typed out a (fake) signal URL, and... posting was blocked. It doesn't appear to be nonsense, it appears to be entirely true that any tweet with "signal.me" in it is blocked. Occam's razor says they're blocking Signal. Hanlon's razor says they're just idiots. Either way: An important tool for communication is being blocked by twitter, which is both dangerous and not "nonsense". Given Elon Musk's current propensity for authoritarianism and censorship, I'm leaning towards Occam's explanation. If you have evidence otherwise, I would genuinely like to see it, but honestly Hanlon's explanation that it's incompetence is not much better.

by j-bos 2y ago

sunaookami 2y ago

There are certain topics that you can't discuss on Hacker News reasonably and social media is one of them.

bluebarbet 2y ago
Politics in general. Because everyone has an opinion, often based on their values rather than cold facts, and people do not like their values being questioned. The discussion is more civil than on other forums, but the difference is not night and day. Disappointing.
- AlecSchueler 2y ago
  I generally agree with no politics on here but the DOGE stuff is very much tech news.

Liquidor 2y ago

HN is always a mess when the subject contains Musk, Trump, Google, browsers or social media platforms in general. I don't mind the slight political aspects of things, but reading a ton of hate and "I already deleted X" (pun intended) and "Just use Y other platform" (that no normal user can figure out) comments is just uninteresting and should stay on Reddit or wherever these nonproductive comments fit into. I'd love to hear more about this case, the technical aspects and the follow-ups/investigations. Let's focus on that, no? Maybe it's just me.

t43562 2y ago
You get to moderate up or down. Otherwise people say what they want.
- jeroenhd 2y ago
  The biggest exception to that is dead/shadow banned accounts. Requiring showdead (without much of an explanation what that is) to see some heavily-downvoted comments makes it rather difficult to engage with some people. Then again, I rarely feel the need to engage with dead accounts. In terms of moderation, you also get to flag/vouch posts, so moderation isn't entirely binary.

lenkite 2y ago

[flagged]

pjc50 2y ago
Everything political gets downvoted, from either side, but you're going to need better evidence than Musk and rumors for this fraud. (There probably is some fraud! There is in any large money handling system! Japan had a problem with elderly people claiming pensions after they'd died, for example. It's just that you need a better standard of evidence before cutting off money that people are legally entitled to, because otherwise the fraud detection process is going to have false positives.)
- lenkite 2y ago
  Being down-voted is OK, but posts being flagged and removed for posting factual news is not. You will need to define your threshold for standard of evidence. If you automatically disbelieve everything on doge.gov, then there is nothing one can do to convince you. You have chosen to shut your eyes. Please note: I am not an American citizen. As for "rumours", when I was a junior developer working in a service company in Bangalore over 15 years ago, developing tax filing software for an American state, during a test run on live data, I filed bug-tickets for duplicate SSN, SSN's with folks over 150 years of age, obviously spurious unemployment claims, etc. All of them were closed and the contractor told my manager not to file such tickets. (I am really thankful I left that line of work) These problems are actually very well-known. They really aren't "rumours". You can choose to put in a few hours or a few days of effort in talking to people and figuring this out yourself.
  - kasey_junk 2y ago
    Something can be factual and political. The guidelines suggest that political content is off topic for this site and that you should flag it. Right now there is an interesting convergence of tech, politics and general newsworthiness that is going to stress the content moderation system. But people flagging a story as obviously political is the system working as designed.
- 2y ago

BluSyn 2y ago

Do all these commenters believe this nonsense? The conspiracy thinking has reached new peaks. Hard to take concerns of free speech seriously from people promoting platforms that routinely “moderate” any dissenting opinions (HN included). Our ability for collective sense making seems to be permanently destroyed. Two people who seem to agree on everything point-by-point then reach different conclusions on the final step. Its bewildering.

1oooqooq 2y ago
up/down vote is the laziest form of moderation. you get what you pay for.
- JansjoFromIkea 2y ago
  Discussion mediums just don't seem to scale very well at all. Feels like we've arrived at a point where it's either this or walls of text where you spend more time trying to figure out what a post is replying to than you'd need to keep up with the new messages coming in (i.e. loads of discords) I remember as a teen how much of a pain it was to find a good forum. Too few users and it'd feel like a graveyard, not worth checking in on often enough to build up a habit. Too many and it was impossible to keep track of anything or gain enough of an understanding of the regulars to know how to read their posts. Even the sweet spot in the middle would be frequently torn to shreds by one troll or mentally ill poster spamming the forum in a frenzy. Far preferred it to the reddit tree based vote setup but I can understand how this is what most people have settled on.
  - 1oooqooq 2y ago
    slash dot solved news comment moderation decades ago. open sourced it. nobody cares.
hug 2y ago
How do you mean do we "believe this nonsense"? I don't use twitter regularly, but I have two accounts for reasons. I just signed in, I typed out a (fake) signal URL, and... posting was blocked. It doesn't appear to be nonsense, it appears to be entirely true that any tweet with "signal.me" in it is blocked. Occam's razor says they're blocking Signal. Hanlon's razor says they're just idiots. Either way: An important tool for communication is being blocked by twitter, which is both dangerous and not "nonsense". Given Elon Musk's current propensity for authoritarianism and censorship, I'm leaning towards Occam's explanation. If you have evidence otherwise, I would genuinely like to see it, but honestly Hanlon's explanation that it's incompetence is not much better.