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So, just to be clear, someone at HN is removing these posts from the front page, right? And this person is blocking them why? Because they dont like the subj

So, just to be clear, someone at HN is removing these posts from the front page, right? And this person is blocking them why? Because they dont like the subject matter?

dragonwriter 2y ago
> So, just to be clear, someone at HN is blocking these posts, right? Judging from the fact that they are visible and not blocked, I would say pretty clearly wrong. They are probably getting flagged as most political controversies (regardless of the ideological bent of the story or who it seems to favor) do, because plenty of people here either (1) don't want to see that in general, or (2) don't think HN is a good place for it, even if they have no problem with it generally.
- emorning3 2y ago
  Thanks very much the reply, I needed to hear that. OTOH, clearly HN is for well-heeled tech bros that dont care the world outside is burning down. I'm outta here.
  - etrautmann 2y ago
    this is a reasonable perspective, but an alternative one is that when all of the news is hard, we may want to partition our time between actively choosing to take in political news vs. anything else we're looking for. I'm not pushing one view, but I think it's reasonable for someone to be politically informed and engaged but want to have some venue free of that information for times when they're looking for that.
- emorning3 2y ago
  PS: This page does not appear on the home page
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
just to be clear, it's not blocked, it only has 28 upvotes atm, why do you think it would be on the front page, yet, or for long? Nothing to see, yet perhaps. Stuff moves fast around here. There's lots of threads, lots of discussions and eyeballs on unflagged posts. It's calmed down a bit in the last week or two actually.
hayst4ck 2y ago
No. HN doesn't work like that. HN is actually fairly democratic. Once you have a certain amount of karma, you are able to flag posts. If enough people flag a post it gets removed. My understanding is dang doesn't explicitly remove anything that isn't spam, in fact, he's usually responsible for un-flagging things that get flagged. This post was flagged and got unflagged. Flagging being one way things get removed. An additional element of moderation is an algorithm that looks for controversy. It calculates a score based on number of comments, number of upvotes, number of flags, and aggregated downvotes. If anything looks divisive, then it is probably not "curiosity provoking," and instead something that invites flame wars. If a post is determined to be controversial (which is likely an invisible flag) it gets automatic down ranking and usually kicked off the front page. This is algorithmic moderation. dang doesn't want HN to be a battleground, and so the automatic moderation makes it so that if you can't play nice (downvote or flag too many people) you can't have the conversation. This, of course, is vulnerable to attack as all systems are, so for real news rather than fight provoking op-ed, dang removes the invisible "controversial" flag which lets the raw time + upvotes score manage the ranking. The short version is that for HN moderation there is a dispassionate algorithm that punishes "fights" and sometimes dang actively performs an action that lets the fight happen, but he doesn't actively stop fight provoking content.
- AnonHP 2y ago
  > The short version is that for HN moderation there is a dispassionate algorithm that punishes "fights" and sometimes dang actively performs an action that lets the fight happen, but he doesn't actively stop fight provoking content. I don’t think the last part is true. As moderator, dang does have the ability to manually down rank posts based on the HN guidelines as well as what he views is good enough for HN.
LastTrain 2y ago
Yes

So, just to be clear, someone at HN is removing these posts from the front page, right? And this person is blocking them why? Because they dont like the subject matter?

dragonwriter 2y ago

> So, just to be clear, someone at HN is blocking these posts, right? Judging from the fact that they are visible and not blocked, I would say pretty clearly wrong. They are probably getting flagged as most political controversies (regardless of the ideological bent of the story or who it seems to favor) do, because plenty of people here either (1) don't want to see that in general, or (2) don't think HN is a good place for it, even if they have no problem with it generally.

emorning3 2y ago
Thanks very much the reply, I needed to hear that. OTOH, clearly HN is for well-heeled tech bros that dont care the world outside is burning down. I'm outta here.
- etrautmann 2y ago
  this is a reasonable perspective, but an alternative one is that when all of the news is hard, we may want to partition our time between actively choosing to take in political news vs. anything else we're looking for. I'm not pushing one view, but I think it's reasonable for someone to be politically informed and engaged but want to have some venue free of that information for times when they're looking for that.
emorning3 2y ago
PS: This page does not appear on the home page

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

just to be clear, it's not blocked, it only has 28 upvotes atm, why do you think it would be on the front page, yet, or for long? Nothing to see, yet perhaps. Stuff moves fast around here. There's lots of threads, lots of discussions and eyeballs on unflagged posts. It's calmed down a bit in the last week or two actually.

hayst4ck 2y ago

No. HN doesn't work like that. HN is actually fairly democratic. Once you have a certain amount of karma, you are able to flag posts. If enough people flag a post it gets removed. My understanding is dang doesn't explicitly remove anything that isn't spam, in fact, he's usually responsible for un-flagging things that get flagged. This post was flagged and got unflagged. Flagging being one way things get removed. An additional element of moderation is an algorithm that looks for controversy. It calculates a score based on number of comments, number of upvotes, number of flags, and aggregated downvotes. If anything looks divisive, then it is probably not "curiosity provoking," and instead something that invites flame wars. If a post is determined to be controversial (which is likely an invisible flag) it gets automatic down ranking and usually kicked off the front page. This is algorithmic moderation. dang doesn't want HN to be a battleground, and so the automatic moderation makes it so that if you can't play nice (downvote or flag too many people) you can't have the conversation. This, of course, is vulnerable to attack as all systems are, so for real news rather than fight provoking op-ed, dang removes the invisible "controversial" flag which lets the raw time + upvotes score manage the ranking. The short version is that for HN moderation there is a dispassionate algorithm that punishes "fights" and sometimes dang actively performs an action that lets the fight happen, but he doesn't actively stop fight provoking content.

AnonHP 2y ago
> The short version is that for HN moderation there is a dispassionate algorithm that punishes "fights" and sometimes dang actively performs an action that lets the fight happen, but he doesn't actively stop fight provoking content. I don’t think the last part is true. As moderator, dang does have the ability to manually down rank posts based on the HN guidelines as well as what he views is good enough for HN.

LastTrain 2y ago

Yes