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There was a prominent AMA for an israeli soldier while stationed in Gaza oppressing brown minorities and blowing up their children. The world sees what Israel h

by rsoto2 3mo ago

There was a prominent AMA for an israeli soldier while stationed in Gaza oppressing brown minorities and blowing up their children. The world sees what Israel has done it's not an "online" thing there are real humanitarian orgs and the UN accusing Israel of genocide.

tomhow 3mo ago
Can you share a link or any identifying words that would enable us to know exactly what you're referring to? Dang and I monitor this site throughout the day, every day, and we have no idea what you mean. If it was a "prominent AMA" that we "hosted", we would remember.
- rsoto2 3mo ago
  It was on the front page(I want to say the January after Oct 7), and has since been scrubbed along with the many comments I made on it. Here is me referencing it about 11 months ago and I have older comments that reference it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44864419#44866331 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44864419#44866331 I guess HN likes to scrub things that make them look bad instead of confronting the reality that they helped launder and "humanize" genocide.
  - tomhow 3mo ago
    I'm not sure how it's plausible that we would (1) want to host something like what you're describing, and then (2) completely scrub it and pretend it never happened. We don't ever delete anything from HN (except in rare cases where a user asks us to do so for privacy reasons). If we had deleted something as controversial/inflammatory as what you're claiming, it would easily be exposed; the HN API is public and many people ingest and store everything that is posted, so someone would have a record of it and could easily dig it up. That's aside from any cached copies in The Internet Archive, any screenshots of it, any tweets about it, etc. We never even consider trying to hide anything that's happened on HN, because it would so easily be exposed if we did. If something bad happens on HN, we own it and work to improve. Edit: The thread you must be referring to is this, in January 2024: ICJ orders Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza, stops short of ordering ceasefire - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39143043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39143043 - Jan 2024 (1401 comments) This comment, which appears near the bottom of the thread, is from someone identifying as an IDF soldier and sharing their perspective: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39147721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39147721. That user posted 9 comments in a thread with 1401 comments. Most of the replies to them were hostile but attracted no moderator action. Some of your replies attracted user flags and comments from dang due to breaking the guidelines. This is routine moderation. The guidelines apply, regardless of the topic; otherwise there would be no point having guidelines, and we'd never be able to have discussions about any difficult topics at all. The main topic and the overwhelming majority of comments in the thread were critical of the IDF.
    - rsoto2 3mo ago
      My mistake you are correct. I will edit my previous comments
      - tomhow 3mo ago
        Thank you. If you would like to edit past comments, you can email us (hn@ycombinator.com) and we can work with you to correct the record.
        rsoto2 3mo ago
        Thanks and apologies for the grief. I have replied at least to the parent comment from this thread to correct myself. I mentioned it I think two previous times and I didn't realize you couldn't reply to old comments. I'll send an email
- rsoto2 3mo ago
  Also, the mods were heavily in the thread and flagged most of my comments calling the soldier a war criminal. I wonder how many ex-IDF have worked at ycombinator companies.
  - tomhow 3mo ago
    The guidelines apply regardless of the topic, and regardless of who you're replying to. There's no point having guidelines if we only apply them in cases where it's popular. For the record, this is the comment that dang replied to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39158222 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39158222.

by rsoto2 3mo ago

tomhow 3mo ago

Can you share a link or any identifying words that would enable us to know exactly what you're referring to? Dang and I monitor this site throughout the day, every day, and we have no idea what you mean. If it was a "prominent AMA" that we "hosted", we would remember.

rsoto2 3mo ago
It was on the front page(I want to say the January after Oct 7), and has since been scrubbed along with the many comments I made on it. Here is me referencing it about 11 months ago and I have older comments that reference it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44864419#44866331 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44864419#44866331 I guess HN likes to scrub things that make them look bad instead of confronting the reality that they helped launder and "humanize" genocide.
- tomhow 3mo ago
  I'm not sure how it's plausible that we would (1) want to host something like what you're describing, and then (2) completely scrub it and pretend it never happened. We don't ever delete anything from HN (except in rare cases where a user asks us to do so for privacy reasons). If we had deleted something as controversial/inflammatory as what you're claiming, it would easily be exposed; the HN API is public and many people ingest and store everything that is posted, so someone would have a record of it and could easily dig it up. That's aside from any cached copies in The Internet Archive, any screenshots of it, any tweets about it, etc. We never even consider trying to hide anything that's happened on HN, because it would so easily be exposed if we did. If something bad happens on HN, we own it and work to improve. Edit: The thread you must be referring to is this, in January 2024: ICJ orders Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza, stops short of ordering ceasefire - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39143043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39143043 - Jan 2024 (1401 comments) This comment, which appears near the bottom of the thread, is from someone identifying as an IDF soldier and sharing their perspective: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39147721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39147721. That user posted 9 comments in a thread with 1401 comments. Most of the replies to them were hostile but attracted no moderator action. Some of your replies attracted user flags and comments from dang due to breaking the guidelines. This is routine moderation. The guidelines apply, regardless of the topic; otherwise there would be no point having guidelines, and we'd never be able to have discussions about any difficult topics at all. The main topic and the overwhelming majority of comments in the thread were critical of the IDF.
  - rsoto2 3mo ago
    My mistake you are correct. I will edit my previous comments
    - tomhow 3mo ago
      Thank you. If you would like to edit past comments, you can email us (hn@ycombinator.com) and we can work with you to correct the record.
      - rsoto2 3mo ago
        Thanks and apologies for the grief. I have replied at least to the parent comment from this thread to correct myself. I mentioned it I think two previous times and I didn't realize you couldn't reply to old comments. I'll send an email
rsoto2 3mo ago
Also, the mods were heavily in the thread and flagged most of my comments calling the soldier a war criminal. I wonder how many ex-IDF have worked at ycombinator companies.
- tomhow 3mo ago
  The guidelines apply regardless of the topic, and regardless of who you're replying to. There's no point having guidelines if we only apply them in cases where it's popular. For the record, this is the comment that dang replied to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39158222 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39158222.