Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

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This comment breaks the site guidelines. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow them when posting here?

When people's views are divided, internet readers are a million times too quick to assume that the other side is brigading, shilling, spying, astroturfing, promoting secret agendas, fifth-columning, foreign-agenting, or (this seems to be the latest favorite word) disingenuous—even when they have zero basis for thinking so. (Someone representing an opposing view is no basis for thinking so.) This is a cognitive bias. It leads people to imagine nefariousness and project it onto other users. That poisons the community—and this poison is actually the bigger problem by far. We've even seen individual users singled out for attack merely for a different point of view. In the limit case it even approaches mob behavior.

Therefore all HN users are expected to have the self-restraint to rein in this impulse, most of all on paranoia-prone topics like spies hiding things in technology, nations planting foreign agents, and all the rest of this. Yes, these are things; and internet commenters imagining them is also a thing.

Here are a few of the other explanations I've posted about this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20239719

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20199254

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19862158

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19404162

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19402447

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16632589

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16532039

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

It's really not. If you spent 10 minutes on HN Algolia and looked through all threads that reference China in the title (e.g. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=china&sort=byPopularity&prefix...), and then visited the comment section of any thread that had no relation to USA (e.g. "WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me", "Report on forced organ harvesting in China", etc.) then you'll always find Chinese nationalists/shills resorting to US whataboutism.. You can try to do the same with any other country, and you won't see this trend.

It's also very common for threads that are negative towards China to quickly disappear from the frontpage for no reason despite just recently appearing, or even being at the first position. An example from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20336543. I really don't understand how you can deny this.

> you'll always find Chinese nationalists/shills resorting to US whataboutism

You've broken the site guidelines again with this. That's not cool. I'm not sure what to do besides repeat the explanation and links I just gave you.

> You can try to do the same with any other country, and you won't see this trend

Of course. That's the geopolitical battle of the moment. It was the same with Russia a year ago. All this shows is what controversy is hot right now.

> It's also very common for threads that are negative towards China to quickly disappear from the frontpage

Moderators routinely downweight hot controversies and political battles, as well as articles that repeat what has already been discussed recently. If we didn't, the front page would consist of nothing but that. Your mistake is in jumping to the conclusion that this has anything to do with our own political views or some secret bias about China. It does not. Our job is to protect HN from (a) mind-numbing repetition, and (b) earth-scorching flamewars. Why? Because those things kill intellectual curiosity, which is the point of this site. Everything we do as mods follows from that principle.

By the way, that last bit can be inverted to get a reliable test for moderator action on HN. If moderators do X, can you find a path from the principle of intellectual curiosity to X? If so, that's probably why we did it. If not, you can always ask us what the path is. We're happy to answer questions, but (again) as the guidelines say, it's better to send them to hn@ycombinator.com.

Could you clarify one thing: if a thread has already reached the frontpage (and is in a position where it should only continue to gain popularity rather than disappear, e.g. 50 upvotes in 20 minutes), does mass flagging the thread have any influence on its score? Because from outside observations it surely seems like it does, especially when you take into consideration that I’ve on several occasions seen a thread get knocked out, only for a moderator to push the thread back to the frontpage again.

I would also argue that by allowing users to resort to US whataboutism then these comments break multiple rules by introducing flamewars and engaging in political battles.. which, in my opinion, result in you failing to prevent (a) mind-numbing repetition, and (b) earth-scorching flamewars.

I’m also very curious about the logic behind down-weighting this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20336543. In my opinion, it’s very high quality journalism, with two journalists risking their lives to give unprecedented access to a region that’s been technologically cut off from the rest of the world. I also believe it’s the first time we saw what China did to the children of the families that had been sent to the camps.

Normally I'm happy to answer questions like this. But when you repeat the very provocation that I just asked you twice to omit from your HN comments, my trust in your good faith diminishes.

It's unfortunately common for some users to question HN moderation as a way of challenging the mods to political or ideological duels. Our experience with that is that no matter how patiently one answers, every answer is met with a fresh flurry of litigious questions, because the purpose is not to learn but to fight. This is risky for us—it amounts to a DoS attack on the site, quickly exhausting our time and energy, stealing resources from other users and from work we might do to improve HN for everybody.

I'd be delighted to be wrong, but your comment seems to signal that you don't want to use HN as intended, which includes respecting the way it is currently moderated. So first I need a reason to believe that you actually do want that, and then I'll be happy to answer whatever you like.

If you feel my tone was aggressive, condescending or negative in other ways then I’m sorry.

I think it’s an unfair interpretation to believe that I don’t want to use HN as intended, I’m just tired of seeing every thread that’s critical of China head down the same path. You said:

> That is not at all an accurate description. This is a classic example of how people feel like the site is biased against their point of view even when it's the dominant one.

The US whataboutism is undeniable, you also acknowledged it yourself, while highlighting the same thing happened with Russian threads. I think it’s naive to believe that “all this shows is what controversy is hot right now”. Because it’s a common and effective tactic that occur on all social media, and in threads that aren’t related to China/Russia, everyone usually seem to be able to behave and stay on-topic.

As for mass flagging and quick downvotes, I can only make assumptions based on personal experience and careful observations (been using HN for over half a decade and tend to refresh the site every few minutes). You seem to blame/credit moderators for causing the threads to disappear, whereas I was under the impression it was often caused by mass flagging.. so I’m genuinely curious if flagging a thread has any effect on its position, or if it simply alert a moderator to take a closer look.

Yes, flagging affects a submission's rank. So do moderation penalties and various software penalties. User flags are usually the main reason.

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