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I am not sure how it's possible to defend the kind of stuff DOGE is doing anymore. Even the veneer of looking for efficiency is gone. There have only been claim

I am not sure how it's possible to defend the kind of stuff DOGE is doing anymore. Even the veneer of looking for efficiency is gone. There have only been claims of 'fraud' with no real evidence backing up the claimed scale of fraud. At this point it simply looks like DOGE is yet another attempt to use a popular trope (Govt fraud and waste) to push through changes specifically designed to give unchecked power to one individual. This much concentrated, unchecked power opens up vast opportunities for fraud and corruption and there are pretty much no instances in history where it turned out be to a good thing in retrospect. Also, very surprised this story made it to the front page. Typically, stuff like this gets flagged off the front page within minutes.

bedane 2y ago
[flagged]
- exe34 2y ago
  most of this stuff is getting flagged within minutes.
- dang 2y ago
  hn staff turned off the flags on this story as soon as we found out about it, restoring it to HN's front page.
GolDDranks 2y ago
> Typically, stuff like this gets flagged off the front page within minutes. Why would that be, because it's too "political" for tech news? Or are there actual DOGE sympathies within the HN population?
- ethbr1 2y ago
  > Or are there actual DOGE sympathies within the HN population? I wouldn't mind that so much, except they're minimally-active in the comment section and instead use flagging. At least defend your beliefs. Switching to https://news.ycombinator.com/active https://news.ycombinator.com/active (/active) with showdead is a better HN experience, nowadays.
  - ivewonyoung 2y ago
    > I wouldn't mind that so much, except they're minimally-active in the comment section and instead use flagging. At least defend your beliefs. From what I see, even good comments with facts and sources that go against the prevalent narrative are either downvoted or flagged a good chunk of the time, which discourages people from commenting(as it's meant to be) because of lack of visibility. It can also make the commenters unable to post comments for hours because HN's rate limiter kicks in, so they are effectively silenced. Also, many times they're attacked personally and those comments violating HN's etiquette are not downvoted or flagged. Not to mention very low quality Redditesque are also not downvoted or flagged, but are upvoted, which lowers the quality of HN as a whole.
    - outer_web 2y ago
      "People don't like my opinions therefore I am going to sabotage the discussion from obscurity."
      - ivewonyoung 2y ago
        A good chunk of the time, it's sourced and documented facts that are flagged and downvoted, to reduce visibility.
        outer_web 2y ago
        I stand corrected. Please flag anything you disagree with.
        shkkmo 2y ago
        Are you sure? There can be absolutely be voting and flagging biases, but the majority if the time it happens it is due to issues of tone for comments that are picking fights rather then prompting interesting discourse. When you get flagged or down voted, the most productive response is to look at how you were presenting your information or opinion and if there was a way to do so that would be more inclined to produce a productive conversation. Even when it's borderline, there's usually something you could have changed that wouldn't have drawn as much partisan ire and it is valuable to consider this, as partisan ire turns off brains.
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  Sahil Lavingia founder of Gumroad is DOGE. Joe Gebbia co-founder of Airbnb is DOGE. Not sympathetic to, they are DOGE. Those are just the ones I know off the top of my head from listening to basic reporting. The All In podcast is super pro-Trump/DOGE, with Sacks being the Trump regime's crypto czar (bringing that cohort on board). Peter Thiel. Musk. That's a lot of pro-DOGE headspace in HN related circles. A lot of people that HN related circles look up to and aspire to emulate. A lot of people that HN circles network with/have perverse incentives to support. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
  - GolDDranks 2y ago
    That's chilling. I always thought HN as a kinda level-headed corner of the internet.
    - rozap 2y ago
      Easy to think that until you start viewing /active and see all the stuff that's flagged and doesn't appear on the front page. Any article, even those explicitly about tech, science and academia are flagged if they have even the gentlest suggestion that this administration is flawed.
    - deckard1 2y ago
      It pretends to be. But in reality it's always been a VC honey pot. I've stopped commenting here. I've made it a personal rule to only speak out against this tyranny and never talk about tech fluff, which is 100% of the front page of HN. I don't give two solid fucks about SQLite when the US government is throwing people in death camps in El Salvador. This site is straight tech bro fascism. People are finally realizing that Elon isn't the guy his PR team created. He's not Tony Stark.
      - archagon 2y ago
        I wish there was a similarly active community for hackers in the traditional sense.
- leotravis10 2y ago
  It's censorship plain and simple. And the admins/mods are still refusing to admit it.
  - zzleeper 2y ago
    You really don't need many users to flag a post. Get five users constantly flagging anything that makes Trump look bad (and a complicit mod that doesn't undo this) and that's all you need.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    sigh it's just how any site with algorithmic ranking works: some things are going to get down voted. Politics is one of them, for a bunch of reasons articulated in this thread. Complaining about censorship is not going to make any difference. Things have stabilized on roughly one thread on the evils of Republicans per day. Unfortunately they're managing a lot more evil per day than that.
- bmacho 2y ago
  > Or are there actual DOGE sympathies within the HN population? AFAIK a small number of them is enough to hide stuff from the front page. I don't know why is this the case, honestly I don't see any benefit over full time-moderators hiding problematic stuff, only negatives. Like why should a small political group be able to distort the news on the front page?
- rbanffy 2y ago
  > too "political" for tech news? Politics are everywhere. It’s how we negotiate consensus and make collective decisions. From what a government should do down to what features will be worked on this sprint and where are we having lunch today. Tech being apolitical is an illusion, and a very dangerous one.
JohnMakin 2y ago
It’s flagged now - pretty embarrassing for a site called “hacker” news
- leotravis10 2y ago
  Yep, it's blatant censorship and the admins/mods are still refusing to admit it.
  - JohnMakin 2y ago
    I don't know if there's anything to admit from their public stance on this kind of stuff, and I'm certainly not wanting this account to receive retaliation for whatever I post regarding this - they've mentioned that they do get swarms of downvoting groups on particular topics and have taken steps to un-flag things that fall victim to it. I'm not sure what that mechanism is, or if they've seen it, or maybe it's auto-flagging off certain keywords - giving massive benefit of the doubt as possible. Regardless though I've seen this trend on similar news, I think a lot of my favorites contain flagged submissions that are highly relevant for a site like this. Particularly the argument "these types of posts don't warrant good discussion and turn into flame wars" or generate too many comments per up-votes, a signal for bad thread quality - this has really none of that. If this remains flagged after a time it is a statement. If this story is true, this is potentially the biggest breach of all time. It's tremendously relevant and that's why I'm annoyed.
    - JohnMakin 2y ago
      seems like it was unflagged. This story is horrifying, thank you.
  - buttercraft 2y ago
    Who, exactly, is being censored?
  - dang 2y ago
    The admins/mods turned off the flags on this story as soon as we found out about it, restoring it to HN's front page.
knowaveragejoe 2y ago
Anyone who knew anything about the public sector knew there were already efficiency initiatives. USDS(which became DOGE) was this, and they were doing a great job. If you care about efficiency this is what you would support, not taking an axe to everything and having a near-singular focus on lower headcount.

bedane 2y ago

[flagged]

exe34 2y ago
most of this stuff is getting flagged within minutes.
dang 2y ago
hn staff turned off the flags on this story as soon as we found out about it, restoring it to HN's front page.

GolDDranks 2y ago

> Typically, stuff like this gets flagged off the front page within minutes. Why would that be, because it's too "political" for tech news? Or are there actual DOGE sympathies within the HN population?

ethbr1 2y ago
> Or are there actual DOGE sympathies within the HN population? I wouldn't mind that so much, except they're minimally-active in the comment section and instead use flagging. At least defend your beliefs. Switching to https://news.ycombinator.com/active https://news.ycombinator.com/active (/active) with showdead is a better HN experience, nowadays.
- ivewonyoung 2y ago
  > I wouldn't mind that so much, except they're minimally-active in the comment section and instead use flagging. At least defend your beliefs. From what I see, even good comments with facts and sources that go against the prevalent narrative are either downvoted or flagged a good chunk of the time, which discourages people from commenting(as it's meant to be) because of lack of visibility. It can also make the commenters unable to post comments for hours because HN's rate limiter kicks in, so they are effectively silenced. Also, many times they're attacked personally and those comments violating HN's etiquette are not downvoted or flagged. Not to mention very low quality Redditesque are also not downvoted or flagged, but are upvoted, which lowers the quality of HN as a whole.
  - outer_web 2y ago
    "People don't like my opinions therefore I am going to sabotage the discussion from obscurity."
    - ivewonyoung 2y ago
      A good chunk of the time, it's sourced and documented facts that are flagged and downvoted, to reduce visibility.
      - outer_web 2y ago
        I stand corrected. Please flag anything you disagree with.
      - shkkmo 2y ago
        Are you sure? There can be absolutely be voting and flagging biases, but the majority if the time it happens it is due to issues of tone for comments that are picking fights rather then prompting interesting discourse. When you get flagged or down voted, the most productive response is to look at how you were presenting your information or opinion and if there was a way to do so that would be more inclined to produce a productive conversation. Even when it's borderline, there's usually something you could have changed that wouldn't have drawn as much partisan ire and it is valuable to consider this, as partisan ire turns off brains.
_DeadFred_ 2y ago
Sahil Lavingia founder of Gumroad is DOGE. Joe Gebbia co-founder of Airbnb is DOGE. Not sympathetic to, they are DOGE. Those are just the ones I know off the top of my head from listening to basic reporting. The All In podcast is super pro-Trump/DOGE, with Sacks being the Trump regime's crypto czar (bringing that cohort on board). Peter Thiel. Musk. That's a lot of pro-DOGE headspace in HN related circles. A lot of people that HN related circles look up to and aspire to emulate. A lot of people that HN circles network with/have perverse incentives to support. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
- GolDDranks 2y ago
  That's chilling. I always thought HN as a kinda level-headed corner of the internet.
  - rozap 2y ago
    Easy to think that until you start viewing /active and see all the stuff that's flagged and doesn't appear on the front page. Any article, even those explicitly about tech, science and academia are flagged if they have even the gentlest suggestion that this administration is flawed.
  - deckard1 2y ago
    It pretends to be. But in reality it's always been a VC honey pot. I've stopped commenting here. I've made it a personal rule to only speak out against this tyranny and never talk about tech fluff, which is 100% of the front page of HN. I don't give two solid fucks about SQLite when the US government is throwing people in death camps in El Salvador. This site is straight tech bro fascism. People are finally realizing that Elon isn't the guy his PR team created. He's not Tony Stark.
    - archagon 2y ago
      I wish there was a similarly active community for hackers in the traditional sense.
leotravis10 2y ago
It's censorship plain and simple. And the admins/mods are still refusing to admit it.
- zzleeper 2y ago
  You really don't need many users to flag a post. Get five users constantly flagging anything that makes Trump look bad (and a complicit mod that doesn't undo this) and that's all you need.
- pjc50 2y ago
  sigh it's just how any site with algorithmic ranking works: some things are going to get down voted. Politics is one of them, for a bunch of reasons articulated in this thread. Complaining about censorship is not going to make any difference. Things have stabilized on roughly one thread on the evils of Republicans per day. Unfortunately they're managing a lot more evil per day than that.
bmacho 2y ago
> Or are there actual DOGE sympathies within the HN population? AFAIK a small number of them is enough to hide stuff from the front page. I don't know why is this the case, honestly I don't see any benefit over full time-moderators hiding problematic stuff, only negatives. Like why should a small political group be able to distort the news on the front page?
rbanffy 2y ago
> too "political" for tech news? Politics are everywhere. It’s how we negotiate consensus and make collective decisions. From what a government should do down to what features will be worked on this sprint and where are we having lunch today. Tech being apolitical is an illusion, and a very dangerous one.

JohnMakin 2y ago

It’s flagged now - pretty embarrassing for a site called “hacker” news

leotravis10 2y ago
Yep, it's blatant censorship and the admins/mods are still refusing to admit it.
- JohnMakin 2y ago
  I don't know if there's anything to admit from their public stance on this kind of stuff, and I'm certainly not wanting this account to receive retaliation for whatever I post regarding this - they've mentioned that they do get swarms of downvoting groups on particular topics and have taken steps to un-flag things that fall victim to it. I'm not sure what that mechanism is, or if they've seen it, or maybe it's auto-flagging off certain keywords - giving massive benefit of the doubt as possible. Regardless though I've seen this trend on similar news, I think a lot of my favorites contain flagged submissions that are highly relevant for a site like this. Particularly the argument "these types of posts don't warrant good discussion and turn into flame wars" or generate too many comments per up-votes, a signal for bad thread quality - this has really none of that. If this remains flagged after a time it is a statement. If this story is true, this is potentially the biggest breach of all time. It's tremendously relevant and that's why I'm annoyed.
  - JohnMakin 2y ago
    seems like it was unflagged. This story is horrifying, thank you.
- buttercraft 2y ago
  Who, exactly, is being censored?
- dang 2y ago
  The admins/mods turned off the flags on this story as soon as we found out about it, restoring it to HN's front page.

knowaveragejoe 2y ago

Anyone who knew anything about the public sector knew there were already efficiency initiatives. USDS(which became DOGE) was this, and they were doing a great job. If you care about efficiency this is what you would support, not taking an axe to everything and having a near-singular focus on lower headcount.