6 ms·

It is hilarious what does, and does not, get flagged on this website in 2025. The other day on /active, there was a story about a French politician being banne

It is hilarious what does, and does not, get flagged on this website in 2025. The other day on /active, there was a story about a French politician being banned from running for office, due to being convicted of outright fraud for the second time. Absolutely nothing to do with technology or business, nothing to do with the USA. Pure politics in a foreign country. Not flagged. There was a story directly below which involved the USA, technology and business, but had an uncomfortable narrative for some users. Flagged. As someone who still likes this site a lot, this just makes me laugh at this point. I don't know how else to react.

regularjack 2y ago
I wouldn't be so quick to jump to conspiracy theory territory, it could just be that people get tired of reading the same bullshit everyday.
Capricorn2481 2y ago
Because, naturally, people on here want to harm you. We can't say it out loud, but that's where the U.S. climate is right now. HN is not immune from it, and is likely more susceptible to it given the demographic. They flag to keep people from saying it.
- leotravis10 2y ago
  Indeed, I'm sure there's a LOT of people, especially in the HN space are pro-fascist.
  - belter 2y ago
    "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." - Peter Thiel "We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it." - Elon Musk "Our present society has been subjected to a mass demoralization campaign for six decades – against technology and against life – under varying names like “existential risk”, “sustainability”, “ESG”, “Sustainable Development Goals”, “social responsibility”, “stakeholder capitalism”, “Precautionary Principle”, “trust and safety”, “tech ethics”, “risk management”, “de-growth”, “the limits of growth”." - Marc Andreessen "Democracy is to power as a lottery is to money. It is a social mechanism that allows a large number of hominids to feel as if their individual views affect the world, even when the chance of such an effect is negligible." - Curtis Yarvin
  - the_doctah 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
consumer451 2y ago
Follow-up: I should add that in 2025, deleting stories with a tinge of US politics is highly detrimental to the HN user base’s understanding of what is happening in the business world. Case in-point: a US-based family member employed at a FAANG just told me that his Canadian coworkers now reset their phones prior to entering the USA, then restore from backup. This is somewhat similar to what happens when they go to China. This is terrible for business. This kind of information should not be ignored.
- Alupis 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - consumer451 2y ago
    > What shouldn't be ignored? Some small subset of foreign workers decided to take security seriously? That FAANG employed Canadians are suddenly taking these precautions when entering the USA, as standard practice, when coming to a meeting. Nobody can gaslight me into believing that this is a not a new thing.
    - Alupis 2y ago
      I still don't understand your point. Some people, who happen to be employed at a FAANG corp, have recently decided to protect their smart device during a border crossing, and this is cause for alarm? What exactly is on their smart device they are afraid CBP might be interested in? Why did they not protect their device before? Why now? Are there occurrences of FAANG employees having their devices taken during border crossings? For what purpose? Unless you have something definitive, this sounds like some alarmist individuals deciding to take their own personal security to the level that was already recommended of them.
      - consumer451 2y ago
        The trust signals being sent out by the USA are currently making everyone outside the USA "alarmist." As an example, as a European, price a round trip ticket from Prague to Seattle, for around 2 weeks from now. The price is currently <60% of normal. It's ~$420. These are the facts on the ground.
jmyeet 2y ago
Welcome to the Internet. Many forums (including this one) have bans on "politics" or topics that are "inflammatory". 95% of the time what constitutes either is simply "things I disagree with". For US politics in particular, as much as the right-wing cries about being censored, social media in particular bends over backwards not to silence such views whereas anything critical of those right-wing positions gets flagged or downranked as being "political" (eg [1]). Typically this process isn't direct. ML systems will find certain features in submissions that get them marked as "inflammatory" or "low quality" but only on one end of the spectrum. For sites such as HN, reddit and Tiktok, right-wing views have successfully weaponized user safety systems by brigading posts and flagging them. That might then go to a human to review and their own biases come into play. As for France vs the US, I'm sorry but France is irrelevant. As we've seen in the last 2 weeks, what the US does impacts the entire world. All the big social media sites are American (barring Tiktok) so American politics impacts what can and can't be said on those platforms. Twitter has become 4chan, a hotbed for neo-Nazis, racists and homephobes. And which French politican are we talking about? Marine Le Pen? If so, the relevance is the rise of fascism in Europe between National Front in France, Reform in the UK, AfD in Germany and, of course, Hungary. [1]: https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/leaked-data-israeli-censorship-meta https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/leaked-data-israeli-censorshi...
johnnyanmac 2y ago
I mean, there were Tesla earnings calls this year flagged, which would be front page news even a year ago. Tech earnings calls are almost never flagged otherwise. I'm mostly convinced a lot of stuff is flagged and the mods work overtime to pick and choose what to unflag. On what metric? No clue, if I'm being honest.
- consumer451 2y ago
  This is a fair take from my POV. I am very happy not to be modding any forum these days. edit: and to be clear, I was not originally critiquing the modding here.
- taeric 2y ago
  Honestly looks like a fairly heavy handed bot. Is very close to the "if it has trans" decisions we know they did in the search for things to cancel.
  - linkregister 2y ago
    Several users have stated in political threads that they spend the day flagging political stories. I don't think there's any reason to believe a bot is doing it.
    - consumer451 2y ago
      I have been calling them "The Guardians of New." But maybe the far more appropriate term has been there all along: > The Knights Who Say "Ni!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIV4poUZAQo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIV4poUZAQo
      - nobody9999 2y ago
        Bring me a shrubbery!
    - taeric 2y ago
      Fair. It doesn't have to be a bot to look like one. Is certainly a hive mind behavior that is not any less heavy handed than "see a word, click flag button."
thegreatpeter 2y ago
[flagged]
- js2 2y ago
  "Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    Rules made in the late 2000s might not necessarily hold on HN in 2025. HN has shifted into a lagging Reddit, and preemptively shutting down any discourse about the falling quality of discourse on HN is ludicrous and plain annoying. HN has changed, and A LOT of Reddit does leak onto HN, and this absolutely deserves conversation.
    - js2 2y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43698481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43698481
- Shekelphile 2y ago
  It's the opposite, actually. This place has always been owned and operated by a musk crony. Musk only got his paws on reddit recently, and has barely had any success besides getting the admins to shut down r/cyberstuck. Here on HN anti-musk/regime posts get deleted automatically, TERF and other bigoted posters are allowed to post through spam filters from freshly made accounts, and everything else that isn't clearly delineated as 'liberal media' but negative for the regime just gets flagged or deranked from listing.
dang 2y ago
There's always a ton of randomness with these things. People tend to underestimate how that affects nearly every aspect of HN. That is, they misinterpret a random outcome as being meaningful and then attribute a meaning to it. If you assume that rhyme or reason is involved, then of course the results seem bizarrely inconsistent and the only models that fit will be Rube Goldberg or Ptolemaic ones. Simply understand that randomness plays the largest role, and the mystery goes away. (But I know that's less internet fun.) In terms of all these political stories getting flagged: it's a simple consequence of there being a huge influx of intense political stories while HN's capacity remains "30 slots on the frontpage" (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20front%20scarce&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). If these stories mostly didn't get flagged or otherwise moderator, HN would turn overnight into a current affairs site, which it is not and never has been. That still leaves room for some stories with political overlap, though not nearly as many as the politically passionate would prefer. Btw, this is a special case of a more general principle: there are not nearly as many stories on any topic X as the X-passionate would desire. The front page, in that sense, satisfies no one! But back to the politics thing—here are some links to past explanations about how we deal with that: 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... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%20by%3Adang%20flags%20off%20turn&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20current%20affairs%20site&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389 has a good list of more. For those who are up for a more complex explanation, this is really how I think about this problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787306. The basic idea is to avoid predictable sequences: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=sequence%20can%27t%20predict%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
- consumer451 2y ago
  Thanks Dan, I never mean to point fingers at moderation here. I always assume it's users. Not sure if that's the correct assumption, but it's one I stick with.

regularjack 2y ago

I wouldn't be so quick to jump to conspiracy theory territory, it could just be that people get tired of reading the same bullshit everyday.

Capricorn2481 2y ago

Because, naturally, people on here want to harm you. We can't say it out loud, but that's where the U.S. climate is right now. HN is not immune from it, and is likely more susceptible to it given the demographic. They flag to keep people from saying it.

leotravis10 2y ago
Indeed, I'm sure there's a LOT of people, especially in the HN space are pro-fascist.
- belter 2y ago
  "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." - Peter Thiel "We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it." - Elon Musk "Our present society has been subjected to a mass demoralization campaign for six decades – against technology and against life – under varying names like “existential risk”, “sustainability”, “ESG”, “Sustainable Development Goals”, “social responsibility”, “stakeholder capitalism”, “Precautionary Principle”, “trust and safety”, “tech ethics”, “risk management”, “de-growth”, “the limits of growth”." - Marc Andreessen "Democracy is to power as a lottery is to money. It is a social mechanism that allows a large number of hominids to feel as if their individual views affect the world, even when the chance of such an effect is negligible." - Curtis Yarvin
- the_doctah 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

consumer451 2y ago

Follow-up: I should add that in 2025, deleting stories with a tinge of US politics is highly detrimental to the HN user base’s understanding of what is happening in the business world. Case in-point: a US-based family member employed at a FAANG just told me that his Canadian coworkers now reset their phones prior to entering the USA, then restore from backup. This is somewhat similar to what happens when they go to China. This is terrible for business. This kind of information should not be ignored.

Alupis 2y ago
[flagged]
- consumer451 2y ago
  > What shouldn't be ignored? Some small subset of foreign workers decided to take security seriously? That FAANG employed Canadians are suddenly taking these precautions when entering the USA, as standard practice, when coming to a meeting. Nobody can gaslight me into believing that this is a not a new thing.
  - Alupis 2y ago
    I still don't understand your point. Some people, who happen to be employed at a FAANG corp, have recently decided to protect their smart device during a border crossing, and this is cause for alarm? What exactly is on their smart device they are afraid CBP might be interested in? Why did they not protect their device before? Why now? Are there occurrences of FAANG employees having their devices taken during border crossings? For what purpose? Unless you have something definitive, this sounds like some alarmist individuals deciding to take their own personal security to the level that was already recommended of them.
    - consumer451 2y ago
      The trust signals being sent out by the USA are currently making everyone outside the USA "alarmist." As an example, as a European, price a round trip ticket from Prague to Seattle, for around 2 weeks from now. The price is currently <60% of normal. It's ~$420. These are the facts on the ground.

jmyeet 2y ago

Welcome to the Internet. Many forums (including this one) have bans on "politics" or topics that are "inflammatory". 95% of the time what constitutes either is simply "things I disagree with". For US politics in particular, as much as the right-wing cries about being censored, social media in particular bends over backwards not to silence such views whereas anything critical of those right-wing positions gets flagged or downranked as being "political" (eg [1]). Typically this process isn't direct. ML systems will find certain features in submissions that get them marked as "inflammatory" or "low quality" but only on one end of the spectrum. For sites such as HN, reddit and Tiktok, right-wing views have successfully weaponized user safety systems by brigading posts and flagging them. That might then go to a human to review and their own biases come into play. As for France vs the US, I'm sorry but France is irrelevant. As we've seen in the last 2 weeks, what the US does impacts the entire world. All the big social media sites are American (barring Tiktok) so American politics impacts what can and can't be said on those platforms. Twitter has become 4chan, a hotbed for neo-Nazis, racists and homephobes. And which French politican are we talking about? Marine Le Pen? If so, the relevance is the rise of fascism in Europe between National Front in France, Reform in the UK, AfD in Germany and, of course, Hungary. [1]: https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/leaked-data-israeli-censorship-meta https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/leaked-data-israeli-censorshi...

johnnyanmac 2y ago

I mean, there were Tesla earnings calls this year flagged, which would be front page news even a year ago. Tech earnings calls are almost never flagged otherwise. I'm mostly convinced a lot of stuff is flagged and the mods work overtime to pick and choose what to unflag. On what metric? No clue, if I'm being honest.

consumer451 2y ago
This is a fair take from my POV. I am very happy not to be modding any forum these days. edit: and to be clear, I was not originally critiquing the modding here.
taeric 2y ago
Honestly looks like a fairly heavy handed bot. Is very close to the "if it has trans" decisions we know they did in the search for things to cancel.
- linkregister 2y ago
  Several users have stated in political threads that they spend the day flagging political stories. I don't think there's any reason to believe a bot is doing it.
  - consumer451 2y ago
    I have been calling them "The Guardians of New." But maybe the far more appropriate term has been there all along: > The Knights Who Say "Ni!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIV4poUZAQo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIV4poUZAQo
    - nobody9999 2y ago
      Bring me a shrubbery!
  - taeric 2y ago
    Fair. It doesn't have to be a bot to look like one. Is certainly a hive mind behavior that is not any less heavy handed than "see a word, click flag button."

thegreatpeter 2y ago

[flagged]

js2 2y ago
"Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- alephnerd 2y ago
  Rules made in the late 2000s might not necessarily hold on HN in 2025. HN has shifted into a lagging Reddit, and preemptively shutting down any discourse about the falling quality of discourse on HN is ludicrous and plain annoying. HN has changed, and A LOT of Reddit does leak onto HN, and this absolutely deserves conversation.
  - js2 2y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43698481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43698481
Shekelphile 2y ago
It's the opposite, actually. This place has always been owned and operated by a musk crony. Musk only got his paws on reddit recently, and has barely had any success besides getting the admins to shut down r/cyberstuck. Here on HN anti-musk/regime posts get deleted automatically, TERF and other bigoted posters are allowed to post through spam filters from freshly made accounts, and everything else that isn't clearly delineated as 'liberal media' but negative for the regime just gets flagged or deranked from listing.

dang 2y ago

There's always a ton of randomness with these things. People tend to underestimate how that affects nearly every aspect of HN. That is, they misinterpret a random outcome as being meaningful and then attribute a meaning to it. If you assume that rhyme or reason is involved, then of course the results seem bizarrely inconsistent and the only models that fit will be Rube Goldberg or Ptolemaic ones. Simply understand that randomness plays the largest role, and the mystery goes away. (But I know that's less internet fun.) In terms of all these political stories getting flagged: it's a simple consequence of there being a huge influx of intense political stories while HN's capacity remains "30 slots on the frontpage" (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20front%20scarce&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). If these stories mostly didn't get flagged or otherwise moderator, HN would turn overnight into a current affairs site, which it is not and never has been. That still leaves room for some stories with political overlap, though not nearly as many as the politically passionate would prefer. Btw, this is a special case of a more general principle: there are not nearly as many stories on any topic X as the X-passionate would desire. The front page, in that sense, satisfies no one! But back to the politics thing—here are some links to past explanations about how we deal with that: 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... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%20by%3Adang%20flags%20off%20turn&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20current%20affairs%20site&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389 has a good list of more. For those who are up for a more complex explanation, this is really how I think about this problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787306. The basic idea is to avoid predictable sequences: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=sequence%20can%27t%20predict%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

consumer451 2y ago
Thanks Dan, I never mean to point fingers at moderation here. I always assume it's users. Not sure if that's the correct assumption, but it's one I stick with.