Ask HN: Disappearing Comments? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Disappearing Comments?

Just out of curiousity, under what circumstances do comments completely disappear from HN threads? I recently posted a comment (this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34116509 )that several people found offensive to the HN culture and rules. Some comments called me out for my word choice, or the sentiment I expressed. Some agreed. In two or three cases, where I responded to criticism with an explanation of my intent and and apology for the unintended offense, and one where I simply agreed with the interlocutor, the comments - both my response and the one I was responding are now gone. How does this happen?

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I don't think it's normal or common for comments to disappear completely unless the posting user deletes them before there is a response. Sometimes they are marked [dead], and you can see them if you set "showdead: yes" in your profile (click on your login in the upper right to access).

And sometimes threads of comments are "folded", and can only be viewed if you click the "X more" link to the right of the header. But I don't think they are usually removed completely.

I'm guessing you are referring to your comments in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34116509? If so, the comments you are looking for are probably under the two "folded" threads at the bottom.

Got it. Allow me to express just how dumb I feel for having not figured that out.

Feel free to EDIT this text post to let everybody know there is no weird conspiracy, but the moderators can collapse off topic comment trees, so they don't pollute the comments page unless someone really wants to read them. Which is a great idea in my opinion.

I believe my account could potentially be shadow-banned (comments are pushed to the bottom always) due to a few years back i talked incessantly about the time Google invited me to demo technology of mine and they were pretty awful. Of course that's just my word yet when another HN member met the same people at Google ATAP and they patented her work without her consent then got caught with email evidence I did talk incessantly about it.

Eventually I was told by an admin here I need to chill / move on which I have and haven't talked about it in a two years or so.

Overall I just wanted to alert others that tech companies even ones who inspired you are not to be trusted. Demand tons of money if and when you get an invite!

I see you comment near the top

Shadow banning on HN follows a visible pattern. They'll be marked dead automatically and someone will have to vouch your post. If they just float to the bottom with a small number or no upvotes, nobody found your post interesting.

I can see your post and I'm just some random logged-in user so you're probably fine on the shadowbanning front.

AFAICT a lot of posters here are pretty skeptical of contemporary google for all sorts of reasons. I know I am, and my job these days is primarily Android app development. The days of "Don't be Evil" are long over literally and figuratively.

I'm sure there are lots of fine people working at Google, but its a giant company that exists primarily to stuff ads in your face at the highest rate you will tolerate and collect data on you for the same purpose so its not too surprising that there's going to be some ethically dubious goings-on as well and even when you get past that its hard to root for a company that has such a long history of taking well-regarded projects, developed either internally or acquired, and just unceremoniously killing them off right after you start to depend on them.

I have no knowledge of the incident you're talking about but I suspect whatever warning you got was more to do with talking "incessantly" (your words) about the specific issue rather than the issue itself. At a certain point even completely valid complaining can come off as spamming if you force-inject it into any semi-related topic, though I also understand wanting to shout from the rafters when you feel like you've been personally wronged by a large, well-known entity.

If curious here is the post re: MIT student who met some of the same folks I did https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929

It is old news but it's how Silicon Valley works ..every man or woman for themselves and all tech companies I hear incentivize their R&D folks to developers to file patents. I'm sure the tech companies do not care where or how the inventions came from until it would become a PR nightmare. Which Silicon Valley stealing from fledging inventors seems to be stories not worth telling and maybe cause it's textbook stuff.

There are rate limits (I covered this elsewhere in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34129956) and sometimes also downweights on accounts that have posted too many low-quality and/or flamewar comments.

We're happy to remove these penalties once an account has built up a track record of not doing that. We have no interest in punishing or excluding anybody. We're just trying to have an internet forum that hovers at least a little above the low-quality median. That doesn't seem like too much to hope for, but it happens to be nearly impossible on the open internet. Therefore we have to use everything we can along all three dimensions that compose this place: community, software, and moderation.

Thanks for the reply, Dang.

Your reply doesn't say my account was or wasn't yet it could be as well that my thoughts/posts aren't well liked. My thoughts are usually fringe.

Happy Holidays!

I made a comment few weeks ago that was made with good intent bit criticized how the west and western companies look and treat non-western and non-democratic countries and undermine their sovreignity.

My HN posting habbits have not changed, used HN for 5yrs+ but right after that point I will spend a long time composing a comment and the get "you're posting too fast" throttling my post rate and a few other "shadow" limits I noticed. I would have maybe 30min for HN and other sites like this so I would read comments/posts and maybe reply 3-4 posts in ~1-2h window (30min spread over that time), nothing changed on my end and I am not spamming anyone.

I may say things that sound offensive but unless you assume I am commenting in bad faith, I take care to post something valuable and relevant that won't ruffle anyone's feathers too much.

Who knows, I hate shadow moderation but I have no proof there is one on HN either other than circumstantial stuff like this and for what reason? Is it over a misunderstanding? Something I can correct?

I never been much of a joiner so it isn't just HN, everywhere I go I disagree with everyone that holds on strongly to any bubble or hive mind, I don't think that can be avoidee if you pursue truth with sincerity and apply critical thinking. But I also know it isn't just what you say but how you say it that matters, so I am confused a bit.

I have seen deleted comments long after the edit time expires just not on my own to answer your question.

All this said though, this a YC site with a specific audience and goals not a general purpose social media so I understand having to accept more moderation especially given the resource constraints of the moderators.

Just glad I didn't get banned I guess? Enjoy the holidays.

You can create new account without email or any other verification, so it's not really that big deal if your account was completely banned (worst case you will lose your favorites and upvotes history).

You will just lose downvoting feature until you reach again 500 karma I think, which I don't care about anyway, personally I'd find site better, if there was no downvote feature at all for everyone and all comments were visible and distinguished only by number of upvotes.

Btw I agree there should be very clear information about comment/post time limits, because it feels they are not applied equally to everyone and you can't really respond even to people responding to you. Then it seems like you can't provide arguments, while the reality is you are time limited while other people keep discussing about what you said. It would be better if these time limits didn't apply at least in your own reply thread where you are parent, only in other parents so you can't spam others. But honestly I don't have problem with time limits if they were transparently communicated.

I had to create new account since my account was brigaded or destroyed by bots, no matter what I posted pretty much everything receiving (insta)downvotes (sometimes within seconds), no such problems with new account (so much for this being conspiracy in my head).

Yup, I have seen that with bots too lol.

I have an idea for a social network (for a lack of an adequate word), one of the rules would be you can't downvote without a comment and most moderation happens at the edge (clients apply moderation by user controlled settings) but harmful and illegal content can also be moderated through 51% consent of participants electing/certifying censorship authority in the authority domain.

With HN though, i wonder how much is manual vs algorithmic reaction to downvotes/flagging. Either way shadow modding goes against honest and valuable discord.

> You will just lose downvoting feature until you reach again 500 karma I think, which I don't care about anyway, personally I'd find site better, if there was no downvote feature at all for everyone and all comments were visible and distinguished only by number of upvotes.

This.

That stupid color-/intensity-fading is one of a kind. Often these are just comments that brush against the grain / groupthink, but nevertheless are at least worthy of skim-reading, if not more! (Or flag it as offensive to or whatever, but keep it readable!)

You can always click on a comment's timestamp to go to its page, and there you will find it in all its #000000 glory.

Interesting. This is the first time I've seen [banned]. I thought HN only used shadowbans.

We rate-limit accounts when they post too many low-quality comments too quickly and/or get involved in flamewars: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

I'm sorry, I know it's annoying, but it's one of the few (crude) software tools we have to try to dampen the decline of the site. If you build up a track record of not doing that, we'd be happy to take the rate limit off. I took a quick look at your recent comments and am still seeing some of those (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34118788).

You never told me this so I didn't know, short of email there is now way to contact you without a public post either. How would I know you would consider light humor in that specific context (with positive upvotes) "low quality", the humor and sarcasm behind the rate of poor quality products from Google resulting in a continuous stream of HN posts like "Tell HN:Help, google locked me out" was the value in my comment, if I don't know that you consider something like that low value and why that is, I will just continue to post the same type of comments forever? There are many ways you can show me my account is in such a state as well so I can evaluate the quality of my post.

Again, I don't criticize the measures you take just the lack of transparency and communication. I have no desire to debate your rules, just to undersrand them so that I can follow them.

I think you know like a sibling comment mentioned, how easy it is to just create a new account or be hostile/uncooperative. If you prefer that, your plan will work with most people (and eventually myself unless my writing style gives me up). Shadow moderation is an act of hostility which is unfair when we are being cooperative.

Sorry for the delay in replying. We do intend to replace this system with something that gives people more explicit feedback. I agree that not getting such feedback is a problem.

Could you link to the thread?

It is possible that the comment you were responding to was marked as [dead], and that you have "showdead: no" in your profile.

Done, in the text.

Is it this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34118393 ? It's flagged, but I can still see the comment and your response.

The other comment is the one by dang, and it's simply folded.

deserved or not, there is shadowbanning in effect on hn. If you disagree with people enough, you'll end up on the list for offering counterpoints.

often it takes bravery to disagree with the crowd, and often only those who are most passionate have the guts to disagree.

The funning thing about HN is, we're all typing with our pinkies out, so you can disagree but if you dont do it with the utmost literary elegance and most bulletproof logic, it doesn't matter how right you were. Instead, what matters is that for a moment you stepped outside the parameters of gentility and your comments will be held for further review... forever.

Bravery and fact are not always intertwined, but you will nonetheless pay the price for your bravery. Don't be brave here unless you're confident in your abilities of presenting a point covertly.

It was very mild stuff. Even if HN is shadowbanning, as you say, I can't imagine the comments in question drawing that action.

HN admins have a very very VERY short fuse

Also regardless what people say votes ARE being bot manipulated if you criticize the right power-posters. There's a list so far of a small handful of people, with an associated range of downvotes that will be incurred all at once as soon as the author notices.

Initially I thought I was thinking too highly of myself, but when a 30 minute pause happens in someone's post history, and then shortly after their scathing rebuttal graces my reply the predicted downvotes arrive in short fashion within a small window of time. I saw it, I suspected it, I tested it. It's pointless to report 'thought leaders', without them here, and without their patronage of YC, a lot of followers would just follow them where they go.

I would not be surprised if some of these 'power posters' have been given light moderation privileges.

> regardless what people say votes ARE being bot manipulated if you criticize the right power-posters

My guess would be that downvotes like this happen occasionally, but there is no formal list, and no automated system involved. I also doubt it's officially or unofficially approved of by the site. What makes you think this is done systematically by "bots", rather than case-by-base by individuals loyal to the person that was criticized?

> I would not be surprised if some of these 'power posters' have been given light moderation privileges.

Dan has indeed confirmed that some users have "light moderation privileges": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31240711. He mentions "longstanding HN users", which probably has some overlap with "power posters".

That last comment doesn't refer to voting, so I'm not sure if it's related to the GP's point or not.

I'd be happy to tell you what's happening but I don't understand what you're saying. It would help if you'd mention specific links.

It doesn't feel very short.

Have been here for more than 8+ years. I noticed HN has started to be very bubble-like though at least the biased-conforming opinions still from time to time has reference cited. But if it is purely opinions and logical one, it gets downvoted or marked as dead for not conforming to group-thinks that specific type of HN readers disagree with. Nowadays I just rarely to contribute and just throw away accounts after a couple months or 1-2 years.

There are name cleaning bots that downvote mentions of scandals of rich persons.. they can make a whole thread dissappear.

Didn't you know that dang is paid by the deep state?

/s, since sarcasm on the internet is dead, and someone is bound to take this at face value. smdh

I'd like to see some links to possible cases of this. Bots should definitely not be having that effect on HN, and if it turned out they actually are, we would instantly prioritize working on it.

It's possible the person you were responding to deleted his/her comment, isolating your response.

cant delete if someone has replied

Dang probably deleted it after he reprimanded you in the thread... why not ask him?

Because I have no idea who he or she was. The comment is deleted, and I can't remember the handle that posted it.

The comments are still there. "dang" is a user and the admin of this site. Maybe you're missing it because the subthread has been collapsed?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34119476

Thanks. It was indeed folded. My ignorance is showing, I guess.

It is however interesting that the subthread has been folded. It normally only happens to comments after they have been flagged or downvoted enough but here it looks like dang forced it upon himself (I guess because he misread your comment).

> t normally only happens to comments after they have been flagged or downvoted

Incorrect, this has happened to me before and while being up about 10 points and not flagged I still got folded. I am perceiving a change in HN moderation, like Dang's starting to act different since the site's been growing, and I noticed particularly when he's on late at night, HN behaves a little differently.

I haven't devised a test for this particular late-night hypothesis, but you see the behavior enough times and you start to wonder, maybe I should be testing this.

By all means do test these things. I think you'll find in the majority of cases that the patterns are illusory. People routinely make up explanations for what they think they're perceiving—and to be fair, it's almost impossible not to—but those are almost all false. If you did find a real pattern, it would be interesting to know about.

One thing I found impressive about this thread was that dang had a knee jerk reaction that the criticism was about religion and when it was pointed out that it wasn’t, he apologized.

For obscure reasons it's not made obvious, but Dan Gackle (dang) is the moderator of the site. He posts like a normal user, but you are often expected to understand that he is speaking as moderator. Mostly this system works, although occasionally it can be confusing, especially to new users.

We never delete posts outright unless the author specifically asks us to. The most we would otherwise do is kill a post, which puts it in the [dead] state, and anyone who wants to can see all those posts by turning 'showdead' on in their profile. Even that is not something we usually do; most [dead] posts get there either by user flags or because software did it (e.g. because a site or an account is banned).

Other than that, as other users have pointed out already, we might make a subthread collapsed by default. This is more common.

I've been told it's the culture and to get used to it.

If you get flagged by the echo chamber, good luck.

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