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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> If you do not conform, you will be downvoted into oblivion. So people censor themselves as a result.

I see radically divergent opinions on many threads which are not "downvoted into oblivion".

The things I do see downvoted into oblivion are usually unsubstantive and/or uncivil, and themselves come from all directions, often from a similar apparent ideology to comments that are not downvoted.

But if people who would otherwise post in a similar manner to the posts downvoted into oblivion are censoring themselves, I think the functionality is working as intended.

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You'll still see those opinions if you have the link, but there is a very obvious pattern of removing threads about contentious issues from the front page once they reach a certain amount of wrong think.

Either the admins are turning a blind eye, or they're not paying attention. At this point my money is on the former.

The supreme irony of course is that lately the most recurring instances are about the memo that was titled "Google's ideological echo chamber". It's an open secret which cliques have a septic response to disagreement, and who simply wants to be heard but is treated as malicious.

Empathy for me, not for thee, and feelings of safety are more important than actual safety. The content of people's skin is more important than their character.

> You'll still see those opinions if you have the link, but there is a very obvious pattern of removing threads about contentious issues from the front page once they reach a certain amount of wrong think.

There's an obvious pattern of removing threads about contentious issues from the front page due to an overt automated moderation feature referred to as the "flamewar detector" designed to demote posts than generate more heat than light, judged by comments vs. upvotes on the post. This is reinforced by the fact that posts that are likely to turn into flamewars are also likely to get flagged by users who are tired of the recurring flamewars.

Of course, removing such posts from the front page is a completely different issue (independent of methodology) from bias in downvotes.

The existence of a mechanism doesn't absolve HN of responsibility or guarantee objectivity, it just means there is a fig leaf of plausible deniability. Equating vigorous debate with a flamewar is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

It is also pretty ridiculous to posit no link between the different moderation mechanisms. Being downvoted unjustly and reflexively is going to annoy commenters and make them comment back in defense. It sends a social signal that some view is unacceptable, which makes them look like troublemakers a priori.

It's also inaccurate to call this an overt feature, because there is no disclosure on affected threads. While I'm sympathetic to not wanting to stoke fires, it's fair to think the system is being gamed when I never see this happen to threads that skew in the opposite direction about a story that promotes the orthodox view. It will also create exactly the kind of unresolved discussions that guarantee a repeat until the end of time, as a self fulfilling prophecy.

The vigorous discussion should be a sign that people do want to discuss it, and I'm not convinced the flaggers and downvoters are representative of what the community at large believes. In the case of the Damore memo, informal anonymous surveys inside Google showed a very mixed landscape, in a company that skews very orthodox already. For a community that draws from a much wider geography, it is fair to assume even more disagreement. There is ample evidence of ends-justifies-means behavior from the people who want to impose their moral order on the tech scene, and pretending it isn't happening, under the guise of promoting reasonable debate, is incredibly naive.

If anything, these threads should be explicitly allowed to stand, leaving it up to individuals to decide whether to wade in, perhaps with a "keep it civil" preamble.

> The existence of a mechanism doesn't absolve HN of responsibility

I didn't say it did, I said that the mechanism which detects controversy withoutbconcern for ideology was far more likely to blame than an ideological bias.

Obviously, HN is responsible for the existence of the mechanism.

> or guarantee objectivity,

I don't see objectivity as a goal in the first place. The overt standard for inclusion in HN [0], “anything good hackers would find interesting”, that which “gratifies one’s intellectual curiosity”; not “[m]ost stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon” [emphasis added] are inherently highly subjective.

If you want objectivity, a community whose overt standards are highly subjective is not where you want to go. But it's quite odd to come and sign up for a community with such overt standards and then spend a lot of time complaining about the lack of objectivity—it was literally what you signed up for.

> Being downvoted unjustly and reflexively is going to annoy commenters and make them comment back in defense.

Commenting on downvotes is explicitly against the commenting guidelines. Downvotes do not, under any circumstances, compel responses, nor will they ever produce responses from people following the rules of the community.

To the extent that people are positing about downvotes they or others have recieved, they are deliberately and wantonly violating the norms of the community by so doing (it's also quite stupid, even aside from the norms, to do so quickly because on controversial topics inappropriate downvotes are quite often negated within a few hours.)

> The vigorous discussion should be a sign that people do want to discuss it

Which they can (and do) continue to do, and if you want to catch those ongoing controversies you can browse in “comments” view instead of the front page. The front page is for things that generate more light than heat. You can choose your view based on your preferences.

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