Ask HN: Unfairly Flagged Submissions? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Unfairly Flagged Submissions?

26 pointsyesenadam17 comments

There was an interesting story from the Guardian submitted today (not by me), "The deadly truth about a world built for men – from stab vests to car crashes".. Which was fascinating, well-written, well-researched, about how a lot of things in the world are designed to fit men's bodies, and can cause problems (or death) when women try to use them. It first attracted 1 horrible comment, then after 3 more comments it was [dead][flagged]. I didn't see anything in the article that would at all warrant flagging, so I tried submitting it myself, but just ended up on the comment page of the previous attempt. The topic seems one very relevant to people in computer-related fields of all kinds, and one I don't remember reading about before, so I don't think it's been done to death on here.

So I was wondering... 1. Does this often happen on here, stories on particular topics flagged to seemingly censor them, prevent them being discussed (which is a matter of opinion, I guess, which ones fit that description and which don't). Are there notable examples of this from the past?

And 2. What should I do here? I don't know if it was a couple of people effectively vetoing the article, or some kind of consensus. I was very surprised to see this story flagged, and would have liked to see it discussed.

Gender-related articles inspire a lot of nasty HN threads, often bringing in politics and pseudoscience.

My opinion is that they’re within the scope of science and curiosity that HN encourages, but I wouldn’t be surprised if people on both sides of gender issues are flagging them because HN just hasn’t been a good forum for that discussion.

I personally have been so disgusted by some of the commentary on gender-related articles that I’ve considered quitting the site, and the only other topic that has made me feel that way is race/eugenics. Neither gender nor race seem to be topics that are tolerated for long here and, while I don’t flag them, I think that might be for the best.

OK thanks, yes, maybe you're right. Well, 'hide' would work for those people. It's a shame. (This article was also about design, technology etc. Also there seemed scope for startups to help with the problem with new better designs.)

Yep, this is 100% true. Discourse on gender related topics on HN is digusting at best, and gender related articles are prolifically flagged. More undocumented behavior here: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented

This was the dead/flagged submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19250686

The HN moderators will respond to you if you email them, it might be worth emailing them and asking them what happened. They can take a while.

Their email address is in the contact link at the bottom of the site.

Unfortunately HN does have a misogynistic contingent, however some readers also believe general news is against guidelines (it's not). In this case it's clearly been flagged against the norm as you can see that most other guardian articles don't get flagged:

https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=theguardian.com

I think HN also has an anti-flame filter, it might have been caught up in that too.

At least the users flag gender and race based submissions organically or so I have noticed.

Try submitting anything here that criticizes China, Russia, India or Israel and watch an army of accounts flag your submission. They seem to have the hallmarks of a state sponsored clean up, especially true on the subject of China.

>the hallmarks of a state sponsored clean up

Really? Hmm...I just assumed it meant there's a lot of anti-China news in the USA these days.

Isn’t it basically an established fact that at least Russia has exactly that?

I know linking to wiki isn’t exactly scientific, but the article contains a lot of decent source references and it’s easier to just post one link.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency

I’m sure other countries have something similar, but I’m not sure it’s been as well examination as with the Russians.

Wow, that's an amazing story... All those rallies in 2016 in the USA organized by Russian trolls.. Why just 2016? (Apart from that they evidently wanted Trump) Not before or since..Has it stopped?

I read a story about in a Danish paper, maybe half a year back. I can’t find the link for it unfortunately, but the general consensus is that it hasn’t stopped at all.

It also outlined how it was affecting everyone. Basically those troll factories will post a bunch of stuff in various internet communities, and then they’ll use data analytics to see what worked and double down on the susceptible communities.

The journalists and their scientific sources weren’t able to find a specific agenda outside of “Russia good, west bad”, because they’d target everything from debates on avocado toasts to making political sides hate each other.

I personally think that is what is so dangerous about it. I mean, looking beyond governments there is a massive application possibility for this in hidden advertising, and how can you really tell if a person on HN is authentic or on some agenda?

Your last sentence reminds me of a common comment on the subreddit hailcorporate. If people talk about brands authentically they become ads. just because people submit things that look like ads doesn't mean they are paid to do so.

If we invest a couple thousand each year in Apple devices and use them every day is our opinion about Apple authentic or are we a self driving autonomous advertisment for Apple?

Yeah, I also don't like that word 'agenda'. Like "That person has an agenda".. it seems akin to 'bias' - they're mental diseases only other people have. "I'm passionate, he has an agenda." They're fallacies, I think. They do the magical job of lifting oneself up to a superior, more scientific, objective footing, just by saying the words, turning mere disagreement into victory. "You're biased" - (and I'm not - I win). "You have an agenda" - (and I don't - so I win). Also it assumes you have good reasons for your beliefs while the other person doesn't. Which really isn't assuming good faith, or good anything. It's surprising that tactic wasn't exploded and permanently run out of town long ago.

Don't get me started on "authentic"! :-)

HN has a very diverse user base, many of which love their countries of origin dearly. What is sometimes seen as organized behavior, often grows organically.

Because HN does not expose downvotes to users with less than 500 karma, flagging becomes the "I disagree" button.

You can't downvote articles, even if you have 500 karma.

Yes, but it is a very inappropriate "I disagree".

Or, maybe better, it is "I disagree and thus you shut up". :(

EDIT: In the meantime, I "vouched" for the article and read it (for the sake of "freedom of speech"). Though it doesn't "deserve" IMHO to be "flagged" it is all in all a "plug" for a book (that from the excerpt in the article doesn't sound as a good one).

It might also just be because people are tired of reading the frankly propagandic news about other countries that whatever country decides to spew today. It's not very stimulating to read yet another hit piece on some country or other (that yes, maybe we know does bad things - but I come here to read about novel stuff, not to have the same thought reinforced 4000 times per week).

That's normal. HN users will randomly flag everything to death. Just now, people flagged my Paul Krugman submission.

A few years ago people flagged an interesting article about a strange medical condition and there were a few comments that this is totally unbelievable, and the publication is obviously crap. Today they would call it fake news.

So I thought, okay, it is easy to mistake. And submitted the paper published in a reputable peer-reviewed medical journal about that incident. Flagged again. I just resubmit every now and then.

Don't take it personal. People are stupid and/or malicious. Sometimes there are enough of those to succeed. Mostly there aren't and normal people prevail.

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