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@dang - why is this flagged? There is a considerable group of users outside of the U.S.A. that is very interested in learning and discussing about the current

@dang - why is this flagged? There is a considerable group of users outside of the U.S.A. that is very interested in learning and discussing about the current developments when it comes to this kind of treatment of foreigners in the U.S.A. These kind of threads can be very problematic to moderate and require attention in regard the nature of the discussion. However, whether backpacker or high potential talent, this kind of information is very relevant, and I think it is imperative to bring this to public attention. It has also come to my attention that these kind of threads get flagged very often on HN. Are you analysing/monitoring the groups of peope that are flagging these threads or whether the conditions for flagging are set to the right treshhold? Thanks!

aceazzameen 2y ago
Anything perceived as negative towards the current US administration has been getting flagged on HN recently. Maybe bots? It's some kind of obvious campaign.
- huijzer 2y ago
  Yes it's indeed an obvious campaign. Against politics in general. From the guidelines: > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - freehorse 2y ago
    I would claim that these articles describe "some interesting new phenomenon" that is very relevant to a lot of us. I have colleagues right now cancelling their conference trips to the US either because under new rules they most probably cannot get a visa, or because they do not think it is worth the risk. I am pretty sure they are not the only ones in this kind of situation, and I am pretty sure that this kind of situation is quite relevant to the international audience of HN.
    - AlecSchueler 2y ago
      Similarly with the DOGE accessing federal servers there would have been no other community I trusted to understand the implications of physical access, the laws surrounding state data storage etc. "These discussions shouldn't be happening here" but where should they be happening? What other community has experience with Move fast and break stuff?
  - Teever 2y ago
    If politics is off-top why are some of the most popular and frequent topics things like: The CHIPS and Science Act, The SLS rocket, California Zoning Laws, Drug policy in the bay area, The Digital Markets Act in the EU? It seems to me that 'politics' is just used as a euphemism for 'taboo' and there are many unspoken taboos about what is talked and not talked about here.
- Reubachi 2y ago
  YEs, as another commenter pointed out. It IS a targetted campaign.....directly in line with the posted site rules. Political posts which devolve into flame wars are not welcome here. Wether or not it will devolve into a flame war is not even a question. Dang has avery difficult job, let's use our brains before accusing him of...following the clearly stated rules.
  - consteval 2y ago
    While it's true that these posts are political, our political climate is in a unique situation. You can no longer avoid politics, regardless of how much you hide. Even we, who are fairly wealthy techies, can no longer turn a blind eye. Yes, it sucks that even the most mundane aspects of our lives are being fraught with political warfare. The current administration appears to have a desire to burn the world down. I mean, look around you. Can we talk about EVs without being political? What about LLMs? What about the American tech industry? We used to be able to. It's no longer possible.
    - acdha 2y ago
      I would be overjoyed to go back to thinking about politics as much as I did in the 90s where you could go for ages with no negative changes in your life.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  I enjoy discussing/debating politics, but tend to flag things that are framed in a fashion designed to elicit rage-bait rather than discussion, which very much includes this story. In particular I think the immigration question is really quite interesting to debate and discuss (from both sides even!), but this article and consequently this thread is predictably just people kind of spaz raging with minimal concern for facts, data, or broader questions. Low quality topics invariably turn stuff into /r/politics where hyperbole, emotionalism, and broad level misinformation replace any sort of meaningful discourse. Like if you think about this issue for a minute, what exactly is it that you think should be done differently? People being detained and deporting for violating their visa is not new, but it's typically not covered in the media - it happens thousands times a day around the world everywhere. In fact this issue all started when Canada refused to allow entry to her because they suspected she wanted to illegally work, which led to her detainment and investigation in the US once Canada refused to accept her! And if one is upset about the fact that she was cuffed then you're implicitly claiming officers should be able to treat people differently based upon their appearance or sex - oh boy the sexism/racism ragebait would be incoming in a heartbeat. So what is the issue that's even to be discussed?
navane 2y ago
Instead of the homepage, I now just browse lists > active and "flagged" now means "interesting for you!"
- ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
  Ditto
- Aldipower 2y ago
  Thanks. Great hint!
- mostlysimilar 2y ago
  This is how I use HN now. I don't bother with the censored front page anymore.
dang 2y ago
There have been a lot of these threads. Usually the bulk of the flags (as far I've seen from checking this) come from users who are tired of the repetition and don't feel like the stories are on topic for HN. With high-indignation, high-intensity hot topics, commenters mostly repeat their intensely held, pre-existing positions. That is already not the curious conversation this place is supposed to be for, and it has a large chance of degenerating into outright flamewar, which is against the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). We sometimes turn off flags on these stories - you can find previous explanations about that at these links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43212835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43212835 (Feb 2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389 (Feb 2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011 (Feb 2025) https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=political%20overlap%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... We turned off the flags on a couple major threads about this general topic over the last few days. At some point there has to be a limit, because otherwise the front page would consist of nothing but this, and similar, topics. That would turn HN into a current affairs site, which is not the mandate of this place. If you (or anyone) will a look at the above links and take in the basic explanations, I'd be happy to answer any question that hasn't already been answered there.
- computerthings 2y ago
  [dead]
- Teever 2y ago
  If avoiding repetition is the goal are we going to see some proactive moderation on the banal posts about LLMs[0]? I would love to see more stimulating conversation about a variety of topics here[1] but these things don't seem to gain traction. Why is that? [0] https://imgflip.com/i/9o2a9r https://imgflip.com/i/9o2a9r [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Teever https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Teever
  - steveBK123 2y ago
Reubachi 2y ago
This exact topic and topics like it will fill the front page and (at therisk of going against posting rules) will devolve into a more...standard/popular online forum. There have been many posts on this exact topic, not flagged, which you could have found using the search function. Dang cannot control who prompts a flag or not. ANd lastly, c'mon. If you've been here for any length of time, this is exactly the last place this discussion should be happening., because we are all intelligent enough to know that this conversation is heaviliy biased from all sides. Look at the title. @dang, thank you for not just preventng an ancho chamber of a certain ideal, but from preventing ALL echo chambers.

aceazzameen 2y ago

Anything perceived as negative towards the current US administration has been getting flagged on HN recently. Maybe bots? It's some kind of obvious campaign.

huijzer 2y ago
Yes it's indeed an obvious campaign. Against politics in general. From the guidelines: > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- freehorse 2y ago
  I would claim that these articles describe "some interesting new phenomenon" that is very relevant to a lot of us. I have colleagues right now cancelling their conference trips to the US either because under new rules they most probably cannot get a visa, or because they do not think it is worth the risk. I am pretty sure they are not the only ones in this kind of situation, and I am pretty sure that this kind of situation is quite relevant to the international audience of HN.
  - AlecSchueler 2y ago
    Similarly with the DOGE accessing federal servers there would have been no other community I trusted to understand the implications of physical access, the laws surrounding state data storage etc. "These discussions shouldn't be happening here" but where should they be happening? What other community has experience with Move fast and break stuff?
- Teever 2y ago
  If politics is off-top why are some of the most popular and frequent topics things like: The CHIPS and Science Act, The SLS rocket, California Zoning Laws, Drug policy in the bay area, The Digital Markets Act in the EU? It seems to me that 'politics' is just used as a euphemism for 'taboo' and there are many unspoken taboos about what is talked and not talked about here.
Reubachi 2y ago
YEs, as another commenter pointed out. It IS a targetted campaign.....directly in line with the posted site rules. Political posts which devolve into flame wars are not welcome here. Wether or not it will devolve into a flame war is not even a question. Dang has avery difficult job, let's use our brains before accusing him of...following the clearly stated rules.
- consteval 2y ago
  While it's true that these posts are political, our political climate is in a unique situation. You can no longer avoid politics, regardless of how much you hide. Even we, who are fairly wealthy techies, can no longer turn a blind eye. Yes, it sucks that even the most mundane aspects of our lives are being fraught with political warfare. The current administration appears to have a desire to burn the world down. I mean, look around you. Can we talk about EVs without being political? What about LLMs? What about the American tech industry? We used to be able to. It's no longer possible.
  - acdha 2y ago
    I would be overjoyed to go back to thinking about politics as much as I did in the 90s where you could go for ages with no negative changes in your life.
somenameforme 2y ago
I enjoy discussing/debating politics, but tend to flag things that are framed in a fashion designed to elicit rage-bait rather than discussion, which very much includes this story. In particular I think the immigration question is really quite interesting to debate and discuss (from both sides even!), but this article and consequently this thread is predictably just people kind of spaz raging with minimal concern for facts, data, or broader questions. Low quality topics invariably turn stuff into /r/politics where hyperbole, emotionalism, and broad level misinformation replace any sort of meaningful discourse. Like if you think about this issue for a minute, what exactly is it that you think should be done differently? People being detained and deporting for violating their visa is not new, but it's typically not covered in the media - it happens thousands times a day around the world everywhere. In fact this issue all started when Canada refused to allow entry to her because they suspected she wanted to illegally work, which led to her detainment and investigation in the US once Canada refused to accept her! And if one is upset about the fact that she was cuffed then you're implicitly claiming officers should be able to treat people differently based upon their appearance or sex - oh boy the sexism/racism ragebait would be incoming in a heartbeat. So what is the issue that's even to be discussed?

navane 2y ago

Instead of the homepage, I now just browse lists > active and "flagged" now means "interesting for you!"

ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
Ditto
Aldipower 2y ago
Thanks. Great hint!
mostlysimilar 2y ago
This is how I use HN now. I don't bother with the censored front page anymore.

dang 2y ago

There have been a lot of these threads. Usually the bulk of the flags (as far I've seen from checking this) come from users who are tired of the repetition and don't feel like the stories are on topic for HN. With high-indignation, high-intensity hot topics, commenters mostly repeat their intensely held, pre-existing positions. That is already not the curious conversation this place is supposed to be for, and it has a large chance of degenerating into outright flamewar, which is against the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). We sometimes turn off flags on these stories - you can find previous explanations about that at these links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43212835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43212835 (Feb 2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389 (Feb 2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011 (Feb 2025) https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=political%20overlap%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... We turned off the flags on a couple major threads about this general topic over the last few days. At some point there has to be a limit, because otherwise the front page would consist of nothing but this, and similar, topics. That would turn HN into a current affairs site, which is not the mandate of this place. If you (or anyone) will a look at the above links and take in the basic explanations, I'd be happy to answer any question that hasn't already been answered there.

computerthings 2y ago
[dead]
Teever 2y ago
If avoiding repetition is the goal are we going to see some proactive moderation on the banal posts about LLMs[0]? I would love to see more stimulating conversation about a variety of topics here[1] but these things don't seem to gain traction. Why is that? [0] https://imgflip.com/i/9o2a9r https://imgflip.com/i/9o2a9r [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Teever https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Teever
- steveBK123 2y ago

Reubachi 2y ago

This exact topic and topics like it will fill the front page and (at therisk of going against posting rules) will devolve into a more...standard/popular online forum. There have been many posts on this exact topic, not flagged, which you could have found using the search function. Dang cannot control who prompts a flag or not. ANd lastly, c'mon. If you've been here for any length of time, this is exactly the last place this discussion should be happening., because we are all intelligent enough to know that this conversation is heaviliy biased from all sides. Look at the title. @dang, thank you for not just preventng an ancho chamber of a certain ideal, but from preventing ALL echo chambers.