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Comment by throwawayzilla | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

As I said, we don't want mob dynamics here. Between your reply (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38850057) and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38849882, and the fact that the GP was upvoted to the top of the page, there were clear signs of that developing.

It's not about the individual or the topic. We don't want HN to be that kind of community.

It's hard to see how this is anything other than arbitrarily silencing a popular opinion. I can understand things getting out of hand and becoming the proverbial "two minutes of hate" may be worth quashing but it is frankly offensive to have my honest account of leaving Mozilla represented as contributing to "mob dynamics."

This genuinely makes me think less of HN.

>It's hard to see how this is anything other than arbitrarily silencing a popular opinion

I mean, I've seen what Reddit turned into (it was always there, but I saw it spread outside of the meme subs). I saw how 4chan started. I saw how Twitter started and somehow managed to keep lowering the bar.

People chastised "tone policing" in the 00's and I was a part of that. But I've seen enough trainwrecks in real time to accept it as a necessary step to stop history from repeating itself and lowering the quality of the discussion.

And honestly, it's never necessary: Does calling someone an idiot really advance the conversation in a way that a detailed criticism of the subject wouldn't?

That is my fault, and I apologize. I'd edit the comment if I still could.

From @dang's other reply[0], you have nothing to apologize for. Your insult might've been a bit childish, but it's only being used as a flimsy excuse to silence "mob dynamics" (popular opinion going in a way that isn't approved).

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38850779

HN has had dozens if not hundreds of threads about this topic over the years, including a megathread a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38795308, and this megathread before that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38531104. No one is being "silenced". It's one of the most discussed topics on the site!

It's just standard moderation not to allow a comment beginning "so-and-so is frankly a moron" at the top of a HN thread.

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