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The mods are much more sensitive now to anything they consider flame-bait, flame-baiting, or controversial. Much quicker to intimidate/threaten, de-emphasize po

The mods are much more sensitive now to anything they consider flame-bait, flame-baiting, or controversial. Much quicker to intimidate/threaten, de-emphasize posts, flag-kill, etc. I presume because HN may be influencing/affecting some billion dollar bottom lines now and they can't afford a bad look

Barbing 12d ago
> intimidate/threaten Links to examples? I see “please stop fulminating” “we’ve asked you not to do this [guideline violating behavior] and we’ll have to ban you if you keep it up”, which is gentler than [shadow]banning even with the ‘threat’ of punitive action. Assuming you’ve seen mod comments I’ve missed.
- slopinthebag 12d ago
  why would you think they would make that publicly visible?
  - Barbing 12d ago
    >The mods are much … quicker to intimidate/threaten They’re doing this privately? Normally you shouldn’t screenshot emails/DMs/texts sure, but please do in this case. I have showdead on in Settings, so I should see it if you’re worried about censorship. If someone’s posted this before and it was deleted and not just killed, raise your hand and I’ll add my email to my profile. Offer open to all. Obviously I’m doubting these guys are threatening people…
  - gucci-on-fleek 12d ago
    I've never heard anybody claim that they got a threatening email from dang before though. The moderators could easily block any such story from appearing on HN, but there are plenty of other sites where they could post it, and I suspect that a credible claim would become popular quickly. So I'm not saying that it's impossible, just that if it did happen, we probably would have all heard about it by now.
    - Barbing 12d ago
      Ding ding, right! Obviously, the move is to continuously put your finger on the scale rather than doing something blatantly potentially illegal (depending on the threat). There would have to be some meat on the bone, some unilateral NDA kind of thing… We all should’ve heard of it by now. From Lobsters, Mastodon, blogs…
    - slopinthebag 12d ago
      they aren't gonna send a threatening email, they just ghostban you.
      - Barbing 12d ago
        We were responding to your insinuation that they would do the intimidation nonpublicly. Perhaps it was misinterpreted.
- 0xbadcafebee 12d ago
  Yes that is what I mean. It's an intimidation couched in gentle language ("don't say things like that or else") and the threat is banning. Examples are in my past comment threads and some to my email years ago. I've gotten it for comments that weren't even controversial, it seemed the mods just disagreed with the opinion and decided to come down hard just because. I've seen it on others' comments too and had to defend them. Of course there are some crazy extremist comments, but I'm talking about both comments about programming, and content has been echoed by the UN general assembly or human rights organizations. Those comments are now apparently out of line. This forum has crossed into the realm of censorship normally reserved for generic corporations who remove anything that might affect ad sales.
  - unethical_ban 11d ago
    In my experience, if someone is going to be contrarian or pivot the topic to something else or move a conversation from primarily non-political into political, they have the burden of explaining the connection to the main topic and to be exceedingly diplomatic. One-liners that go against the grain or that will generate a lot of adversarial back-and-forth get warned.
    - 0xbadcafebee 11d ago
      Which is a bit crazy, isn't it? Like a micromanager gone mad. They claim it's a community but it feels more like one person's plaything
      - unethical_ban 10d ago
        I really think it's a good thing. I think it balances the ability to allow dissent and debate while helping ensure the comment isn't flamebait. Without slashdot-style metamoderation it's the only way to keep trolls at bay. I've crossed the mods here once or twice in heated arguments, and it's almost always been a reasonable request from them to clean up my argument. Though I was unreasonably banned on my original account about 14 years ago (hence the username created in angry haste).
mitxela 12d ago
Affecting some billion dollar bottom lines was always the explicit goal of HN.
deleted 12d ago
[deleted]
justsomehnguy 12d ago
Do you have showdead enabled? There is a firehose of the dead submissions and this is a good day today - just about 1 per minute and only 30% are dead. Somedays it's much, much worse. HN attracts every wannabe out there and there is always a banal spam. So no wonder people don't want^W have time to hand hold anyone.
- Melatonic 12d ago
  I've always had showdead on but don't often actually see a ton of dead comments. Occasionally I see one that's dead and seems odd (and sometimes interesting). Lot of the time it is stuff I'm not surprised is dead. And rarely I see something that seems very very odd it's dead - although in those cases I usually assume it's just a bunch of bots or people downvoting (vs some kind kf moderator conspiracy)
  - justsomehnguy 11d ago
    > but don't often actually see a ton of dead comments. Occasionally I see one that's dead and seems odd (and sometimes interesting). > Lot of the time it is stuff I'm not surprised is dead. You can't see something doesn't exist [anymore].
- Melatonic 12d ago
  How do you see the firehose ?
  - justsomehnguy 11d ago
    By going to new? Just now it's 10 dead of 30, #30 is just '48 minutes ago'.

Barbing 12d ago

> intimidate/threaten Links to examples? I see “please stop fulminating” “we’ve asked you not to do this [guideline violating behavior] and we’ll have to ban you if you keep it up”, which is gentler than [shadow]banning even with the ‘threat’ of punitive action. Assuming you’ve seen mod comments I’ve missed.

slopinthebag 12d ago
why would you think they would make that publicly visible?
- Barbing 12d ago
  >The mods are much … quicker to intimidate/threaten They’re doing this privately? Normally you shouldn’t screenshot emails/DMs/texts sure, but please do in this case. I have showdead on in Settings, so I should see it if you’re worried about censorship. If someone’s posted this before and it was deleted and not just killed, raise your hand and I’ll add my email to my profile. Offer open to all. Obviously I’m doubting these guys are threatening people…
- gucci-on-fleek 12d ago
  I've never heard anybody claim that they got a threatening email from dang before though. The moderators could easily block any such story from appearing on HN, but there are plenty of other sites where they could post it, and I suspect that a credible claim would become popular quickly. So I'm not saying that it's impossible, just that if it did happen, we probably would have all heard about it by now.
  - Barbing 12d ago
    Ding ding, right! Obviously, the move is to continuously put your finger on the scale rather than doing something blatantly potentially illegal (depending on the threat). There would have to be some meat on the bone, some unilateral NDA kind of thing… We all should’ve heard of it by now. From Lobsters, Mastodon, blogs…
  - slopinthebag 12d ago
    they aren't gonna send a threatening email, they just ghostban you.
    - Barbing 12d ago
      We were responding to your insinuation that they would do the intimidation nonpublicly. Perhaps it was misinterpreted.
0xbadcafebee 12d ago
Yes that is what I mean. It's an intimidation couched in gentle language ("don't say things like that or else") and the threat is banning. Examples are in my past comment threads and some to my email years ago. I've gotten it for comments that weren't even controversial, it seemed the mods just disagreed with the opinion and decided to come down hard just because. I've seen it on others' comments too and had to defend them. Of course there are some crazy extremist comments, but I'm talking about both comments about programming, and content has been echoed by the UN general assembly or human rights organizations. Those comments are now apparently out of line. This forum has crossed into the realm of censorship normally reserved for generic corporations who remove anything that might affect ad sales.
- unethical_ban 11d ago
  In my experience, if someone is going to be contrarian or pivot the topic to something else or move a conversation from primarily non-political into political, they have the burden of explaining the connection to the main topic and to be exceedingly diplomatic. One-liners that go against the grain or that will generate a lot of adversarial back-and-forth get warned.
  - 0xbadcafebee 11d ago
    Which is a bit crazy, isn't it? Like a micromanager gone mad. They claim it's a community but it feels more like one person's plaything
    - unethical_ban 10d ago
      I really think it's a good thing. I think it balances the ability to allow dissent and debate while helping ensure the comment isn't flamebait. Without slashdot-style metamoderation it's the only way to keep trolls at bay. I've crossed the mods here once or twice in heated arguments, and it's almost always been a reasonable request from them to clean up my argument. Though I was unreasonably banned on my original account about 14 years ago (hence the username created in angry haste).

mitxela 12d ago

Affecting some billion dollar bottom lines was always the explicit goal of HN.

deleted 12d ago

[deleted]

justsomehnguy 12d ago

Do you have showdead enabled? There is a firehose of the dead submissions and this is a good day today - just about 1 per minute and only 30% are dead. Somedays it's much, much worse. HN attracts every wannabe out there and there is always a banal spam. So no wonder people don't want^W have time to hand hold anyone.

Melatonic 12d ago
I've always had showdead on but don't often actually see a ton of dead comments. Occasionally I see one that's dead and seems odd (and sometimes interesting). Lot of the time it is stuff I'm not surprised is dead. And rarely I see something that seems very very odd it's dead - although in those cases I usually assume it's just a bunch of bots or people downvoting (vs some kind kf moderator conspiracy)
- justsomehnguy 11d ago
  > but don't often actually see a ton of dead comments. Occasionally I see one that's dead and seems odd (and sometimes interesting). > Lot of the time it is stuff I'm not surprised is dead. You can't see something doesn't exist [anymore].
Melatonic 12d ago
How do you see the firehose ?
- justsomehnguy 11d ago
  By going to new? Just now it's 10 dead of 30, #30 is just '48 minutes ago'.