Ask HN: is the pushdown of TSA backscatter stories algorithmic or manual? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: is the pushdown of TSA backscatter stories algorithmic or manual?

87 pointsjedwhite17 comments

Just curious. I noticed in the last 24 hours that stories with lots of up votes have been getting pushed down the page and off very quickly, way below stories with way lower votes and more time.

Note this is not a criticism if it is editorial judgement. I can see arguments either way for these stories being included on HN. But there are clearly reasonable arguments that this is an interesting issue with a strong technology angle that the community here is expressing interest in.

At the same time no one wants to see the site hijacked.

So my question is out of curiosity rather than complaint. If it is programmatic, it would be interesting to know if HN is modifying based on content topic profile or the karma of up voters or some other system.

View on HN

its probably a byproduct of flagging. if enough people flag it, it'll die or it'll get reviewed and get killed. the TSA stuff is more political than hackery.

Considering the number of people on HN involved in startups, though, I'd expect a lot of people here regularly have to travel by air, and so the TSA stuff would be of interest.

"To hackers the recent contraction in civil liberties seems especially ominous. That must also mystify outsiders. Why should we care especially about civil liberties? Why programmers, more than dentists or salesmen or landscapers?
Let me put the case in terms a government official would appreciate. Civil liberties are not just an ornament, or a quaint American tradition. Civil liberties make countries rich. If you made a graph of GNP per capita vs. civil liberties, you'd notice a definite trend. Could civil liberties really be a cause, rather than just an effect? I think so. I think a society in which people can do and say what they want will also tend to be one in which the most efficient solutions win, rather than those sponsored by the most influential people. Authoritarian countries become corrupt; corrupt countries become poor; and poor countries are weak. It seems to me there is a Laffer curve for government power, just as for tax revenues. At least, it seems likely enough that it would be stupid to try the experiment and find out. Unlike high tax rates, you can't repeal totalitarianism if it turns out to be a mistake.
This is why hackers worry. The government spying on people doesn't literally make programmers write worse code. It just leads eventually to a world in which bad ideas win. And because this is so important to hackers, they're especially sensitive to it. They can sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm.

It would be ironic if, as hackers fear, recent measures intended to protect national security and intellectual property turned out to be a missile aimed right at what makes America successful. But it would not be the first time that measures taken in an atmosphere of panic had the opposite of the intended effect."

- from pg's essay: The Word "Hacker".

http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html

It seems to me (as a non-American) that America's default response to terrorism is to deprive itself of ever-more civil liberties. This is why I believe some on HN deem TSA articles HN-worthy material.

EDIT: Link

"It seems to me (as a non-American) that America's default response to terrorism is to deprive itself of ever-more civil liberties. This is why I believe some on HN deem TSA articles HN-worthy material."

It's not just how America would respond. Almost any country would up security measures and, as a byproduct, deprive itself of civil liberties.

In the 90's, Britain was under what could truly be called terrorist attack by the (P)IRA. Civil liberties were not severely curtailed to the same extent that the Patriot act allowed.

See: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/744199---israelifi...

It's not upping security, it's upping security in a way which increases safety, at minimum inconvenience to traveleres.

The US TSA bureaucracy, and its emphasis on scanning everything and everybody, and making everybody waste a lot of time, is dumb.

Almost any country would up security measures and, as a byproduct, deprive itself of civil liberties.

That's exactly wrong:

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/744199---israelifi...

Except that it sure doesn't look like the Israeli system could scale to US traffic volumes.

There is a huge advantage for the powers-that-be, to be able to treat everyone like a criminal first and get most of the public to go along with it "for their safety".

TSA "enhanced pat down" is basically what they do when they book people into jail, except there they do it with you naked. So the ironic part is if you refuse it, a few hours later they are probably going to be doing it to you anyway, just with you naked.

The more laws there are out there, the more likely you are breaking one, whether it's flying, taxes, etc. and then they get the "troublemakers" in the system no matter how innocent.

Far more clever than anything the KGB did iron-fisted eh?

That may well be the case, but also remember that a significant number of HN users aren't American, so while one TSA story may be considered news, a glut of them might not be. It probably doesn't take many flags to bury a story. It'd be interesting to see where people burying these stories are from.

thats fair, but this is also the purpose of the flagging. we've seen it before, with some of the stuff around election time. high-voted stuff that is was "hacker relevant" got flagged away because it wasn't topical.

Considering the type of people on HN to begin with, I'd be surprised if the moderation system wasn't regularly "messed with". All you need to affect a collaborative ranking system is one really good hacker shill.

Was just about to ask something similar. I personally feel that most of those stories did not belong on the front page, but such stories usually end up [dead], not lower on the list than other (older) stories with fewer votes and comments.

I could be wrong, but I seem to have noticed that articles with a high comment to upvote ratio fall off the top more quickly. If that's true, it may be the case in those articles.

The ratios were highly variable - while on home the couple of stories in question got a lot of up votes quickly, but varying levels of comments. It doesn't appear from that to be the case that the ratio impacted the rate at which they dropped down.

> I seem to have noticed...

Confirmation bias. The end.

It appears this will remain a mystery, as this question itself also appears to be about to drop off the home page.

It is one of the great challenges with any ranking system - how to moderate based on topic within a community of interest - so I thought it was worth raising.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com