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Comment by realtalk_sp | Hacker News Reader

They would have to start by not demoting submissions with comment threads that explore this issue. This submission from 6 hours ago with 124 upvotes and 212 comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23568095) is not showing up in the first 120 items on Hacker News and I have no idea why. I've posted in a few places asking @dang to explain and I'm just getting downvoted. Extremely troubling.

EDIT: I just got up to submission 270 and still don't see it. That submission has almost certainly been hidden somehow to prevent further discovery.

EDIT 2: I highly suspect Apple is somehow putting pressure on HN to do this. The way these submissions are being 'controlled' is really disturbing. And it would make perfect sense for Apple to try and control discussion on HN. We basically destroyed TripleByte in just the past month. Anything scandalous affecting developers can turn into a company-melting shitstorm via HN.

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Since none of the six responses to this comment so far have the correct explanation, here you go: HN's ranking algorithm automatically heavily penalizes posts with high comment to upvote ratios, to stop presumed "flame wars". This system is imperfect and often removes interesting discussions, but they keep it in place anyways as it usually is flame warring that is suppressed. This system kicks into high gear and then progressively penalizes further as comment totals exceed upvote totals (or thereabouts).

> I highly suspect Apple is somehow putting pressure on HN to do this.

On the internet, "highly suspect" is a synonym for "entirely imagine". That is not happening. Nothing remotely resembling it is happening. Nothing remotely resembling anything like it has, to my knowledge, ever happened.

People imagine whatever they want about these things and rush to post breathlessly about them, but the truth is boring. laser's explanation (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23570990) is correct.

Since your speculation was obviously refuted by the very submission you posted it to, I think we could have been spared this offtopicness. I've detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23570530 now.

Posts getting demoted can and will happen "automatically" if users flag the post when they see it on the main page. It's not uncommon for people to flag stuff they dislike and there are plenty of Apple fans on HN. It's not a conspiracy, it's just user moderation in action. This happens frequently with news and current events if people don't want to see discussion of it.

The other half of that coin is HN choosing to restore posts that have been flagged unnecessarily. That doesn't seem to be happening. It may not be a conspiracy but it's definitely still a problem.

This is interesting, I came to HN to find a discussion on the Hey news and was surprised I couldn't find anything.

> "I've posted in a few places asking @dang"

The most effective way to get in touch with the moderators is to email them via the Contact link in the footer.

The Hckrnews client might be a better experience and stories aren't hidden

Exactly YC and HackerNews are intentionally suppressing the news. Or maybe their "algorithm", but when developers are frustrated, they should atleast rank these stories fairly.

This site is heavily moderated (read: manipulated) by its owners/mods, and I expect censorship for anything that might threaten their business relationships or cause controversy they don't want.

It's more restrictive than reddit today, let alone reddit when it blew up. I'm not sure to what extent the narratives here are organic or not.

I'm sorry but I don't think it is helpful to make claims like this without presenting evidence, otherwise it's just an assumption, which is fodder for unfounded conspiracy theories, which again is not really constructive. It reminds me of a saying: "people criticize what they don't understand"

I understand it, I just dont think there's a purpose in arguing control of a platform they own. This site is heavily manipulated, the moderation is heavy, and censorship (things disappearing) make it hard to present evidence, just like the post in question 'disappeared' until it suddenly appeared.

It only changes how you should perceive the site, it doesn't change anything else. Understand that anything controversial or not in YC's interest will disappear and won't be available for 'evidence'.

This is a great place to talk about computer stuff, but I don't believe any narratives here are organic by default.

You could try setting 'showdead' to yes, then you can see content that's been downvoted, flagged, dead, and/or bans.

The vast majority of moderation on HN is from users, not the mods.

any censorship systems in place to protect the company could easily circumvent that setting. I understand that there is user moderation, but I also understand that doesn't mean anything about top down censorship.

> Understand that anything controversial or not in YC's interest will disappear and won't be available for 'evidence'.

Now I'm starting to get a little irritated. I know this is the internet, but do you really think it's ok to accuse people of outright corruption based on literally nothing? Would you like to be smeared in that way? Not only do we take great pains never to do anything of that nature, it is literally the first principle of HN moderation to do the opposite: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

What you're alleging would be both wrong and dumb. The good faith of the HN community is the only asset that YC has in HN. If that goes, the whole thing collapses. Why would we risk that? Taking the greatest care with it that we can is our #1 responsibility. Personally I wouldn't want this job if I had to do it any other way.

Another commenter in this thread made insinuations of this nature while mentioning the Triplebyte controversy from a couple weeks ago, apparently without noticing that it's a perfect counterexample to all of this.

You can say moderated, manipulated, curated, censored - people just choose between these words depending on how they feel. None of this is secret, or new. HN has always been a curated site. I've posted about all this countless times and answered countless emails. No one has any trouble getting their questions answered if they actually want a real answer.

We don't moderate HN with specific business interests in mind because that would make it less valuable. HN's value to YC is simply in being as good/interesting as possible, because that's what keeps the community happy. Plenty of past explanation is at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....

That's the main point, but really, you'd have to reach deep into the pool of imagination to fish out any specific business interest in moderating this story in the first place. What a bizarre discussion.

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