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Ask HN: Why can't we discuss Israel on HN?
I just had a post shot to #2 on the front page, only to have it flagged 5 minutes later: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46218640
It’s clearly relevant to this audience but it feels like there’s a very coordinated attack on any post that exposes Israeli crimes. Can we get some more moderation protection against brigading such posts? It doesn’t look good on HN that we’re essentially operating as an Israeli propaganda arm, censorship and all. I don’t think it’s the mods doing this, but they’re not stopping it.
- RickJWagner 10mo agoIt’s fair. We don’t discuss the October 7th massacre either, and that must be discussed before we discuss anything Israel has done since.
- cramsession 10mo agoWhatever you think of Oct 7th, it doesn’t have anything to do with tech. Posts like these do.
- ukblewis 10mo ago[flagged]
- duxup 10mo agoCertain topics and keywords seem to get nuked VERY fast in new.
- gunt_crusher 10mo ago[dead]
- sjreese 10mo agoUN RES 1701 is being violated - in Lebanon -- the public news suppression is total from - HN point of view there is two questions - HOW and WHY -- The IDF has created a new adware insertion tools - that has the ability to drop malware by clicking on an ad -- infecting cell phones in 150 countries -- the test of the tool was to shutdown 28% of the internet in the last 30 days ( Cloudflare spin team reports 1 man gave a bad updated ) -- This was done Three times. Second this new tool can create false ad impressions - generating real profit from ads no human every saw - and because of the placement of malware the SLPP ( London based ) lawfare team can sue for millions if you don't pay. for google, meta and XAl the loss with be in the 100's millions on 4.5 Billion in total revenue. The real target is REAL news UN/1701 and YOU.
- vga42 10mo agoI'm just guessing here: Because the "discussion" is either direct propaganda, or people affected by the propaganda spreading the propaganda.
- cramsession 10mo agoThis is news, not propaganda. Palantir was involved in the pager attack.
- BjoernKW 10mo agoBecause that particular article is biased in framing the pager attacks as a "terrorist attack" while, actually, those attacks were precisely targeted at Hezbollah personnel. Those weren't devices for personal - or civilian - use, after all.
- cramsession 10mo ago[flagged]
- myth_drannon 10mo ago[flagged]
- cramsession 10mo agoI’m in the US, which also happens to be the target of Palantir spying.
- ukblewis 10mo ago[flagged]
- cramsession 10mo ago@dang this comment clearly breaks the site guidelines.
- dang 10mo agoAttacking another user like this will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are. No more of this please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dnemmers 10mo agoI think you’d find other sites a better recipient of your submissions. A cursory glance at your post history indicates the ‘Israel’ portion of the article far exceeds any ‘Tech’ interest.
- cramsession 10mo agoPalantir is a tech company.
- ukblewis 10mo agoThis doesn’t change the fact that you are hyper focused on Israel
- cramsession 10mo agoYou have it backwards, Israel is hyper focused on the US government, media and tech industry. I’m just one of their victims who’s had enough.
- appreciatorBus 10mo agoYou can call yourself a victim of whoever you want, but that doesn't change the fact that from the perspective of other HN users, you are hyper focused on posting stories about a topic other users aren't interested in. Those users are flagging your stories. If you don't want them to flag, find stories about topics they are interested in, or find a site where people are interested in a non stop of stream of "Israel bad, US bad, <thing u like/support> bad, <thing I like/support> good" etc.
- appreciatorBus 10mo agoIf it's been flagged to death this is not a sign that it's clearly relevant, it's a sign people are deeply annoyed that "everything is palestine" submitters keep trying to drown the front page in it. The irony is that if there was less effort to turn HN into settler-colonial studies, the odd story would be better received. Instead there are a handful of accounts that post nothing but Israel leading to other readers, flagging them on-sight, knowing that nothing good will come of the "debate" that will feature in the comments. Just the same ppl rehashing the same arguments & positions until everyone exhausts themselves. 8 of your last 10 posts are about the middle east - why? The site name is hacker news not israel news and not palestine news.
- dang 10mo agoI turned off flags on that story when I saw it, long before I saw this post just now. You should have done as the site guidelines ask (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and emailed hn@ycombinator.com about this rather than starting an off-topic meta thread. If you had, we could have fixed the problem sooner. If you want a more general answer about how we moderate this topic, try https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46227485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46227485 (from a few minutes ago). For older explanations, here's a sample: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403947 (June 2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39920732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39920732 (April 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39618973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39618973 (March 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435324 (Feb 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435024 (Feb 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39237176 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39237176 (Feb 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38947003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38947003 (Jan 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38749162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38749162 (Dec 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657527 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657527 (Dec 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27252765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27252765 (May 2021) p.s. Your submission history https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=cramsession https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=cramsession is obviously against the site guidelines because you've been using HN primarily for political battle. Normally we'd ban such an account or take submission privileges away from it. We haven't done that in your case and I'm not going to do it right now (it feels unsporting to bust people in an extraneous context, even if they've been breaking the rules badly). But you should understand that using HN only to prosecute a political cause, even a just one, is a violation of this site.