Ask HN: Why are all posts about David Koch's death being flagged on HN? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why are all posts about David Koch's death being flagged on HN?

40 pointsbobster124921 comments

David Koch was one of the most interesting businessmen of our time. Sure, some people don't agree with his views. But, why are ALL posts about his death being flagged and subsequently removed? None of them seem to be violating any of the rules. This is an honest question!

Examples:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20777811

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20777292

View on HN

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

I'm not a fan of Koch but I don't find this answer satisfying. I really hate to say this, but, it sort-of feels like HN is censoring news.

I would think the death of a prominent business figure would be relevant to our community. But I guess not.

Perhaps one of the hidden agendas here is to not let it become Reddit or Fark.

^So much of this. HN != Reddit_2.0

HN isn't censoring it. User are flagging it. Because it's off-topic.

Large community sites need never censor anything, then. For any subject even slightly controversial, there will always be at least some users flagging/reporting to justify removing it.

Wouldn't you consider selective enforcement a type of censorship?

It's not selective enforcement.

HN users get to vote what shows up on the front page. A certain ratio of votes-to-flags triggers removal. It's no more censorship than voting for a politician censors their opponent.

I guess you're right, then, if it's truly always a result of user reporting and HN never overrides that. I know that's not the case for Reddit, so kudos to HN.

Sometimes we turn off user flags but as far as I know moderators haven't touched any of these submissions.

Because people love to be hall monitors.

> sort-of feels like YC is censoring news.

Only in the sense that every venue that chooses what news is in scope and out of scope for that venue (including every news outlets ever) is censoring news.

It's not, legally or effectively, prohibiting other people from publishing or distributing news, so it's not doing the thing that makes public censorship (and arguably widely dominant privately-run communication platform censorship) a problem.

Lots of celebrity deaths have been allowed to have threads here, authors, business people... this seems odd

That rule is quite regularly violated, though.

My theory:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20776979 was on the front page for quite a while. HN users saw the very low quality of posts it attracted, and started flagging it and similar posts.

HN likes good conversation, not flame wars etc.

What interesting discussion is there to be had about it?

It's hard to imagine that any discussion of Koch's legacy won't be political, which is something HN's moderators generally prefer to avoid.

To answer your question: I personally flag all death articles, unless it is sudden as in important tech person dying young. For any other case there is generally nothing to talk about, as there are no actionable consequences. Though some people like to praise accomplishments now and then.

Every few months or so a new "yes the Koch brothers really are that evil" post makes the rounds, but interestingly not here (HN). Seems that the family is off limits.

I take that back: there have been plenty of posts in the past about the Koch family, of which haven't been largely positive.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10337014

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14833773

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11012196

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12467135

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17377055

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17552286

Some of these have been flagged as well.

"Some people don't agree his views"

Pretty sure it will be closer to 100% amongst the HN community.

I think you underestimate how much libertarian kool aid has been consumed by the HN community.

Your downvotes are funny because there really are plenty of people on all sides on HN

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