Why Signal 'turned our architecture inside out' for its latest privacy feature | Hacker News Reader

Why Signal 'turned our architecture inside out' for its latest privacy feature

techcrunch.com

43 pointsarkadiyt40 comments

All first-level comments on this article are dead due to the scourge of downvoting - Quo Vadis, Hacker News? I understand that Signal has its loyal share of followers but this is just silly. I checked the dead comments and did not find them to be so egregious as to deserve execution. If you don't agree with a comment just respond or ignore instead of trying to cancel it.

Do I use Signal? No, I do not. I run my own XMPP server which has none of the downsides of Signal/Telegram/Matrix while sharing many of their upsides. Do I feel the urge to downvote anyone who uses something else? No, of course not, why would I?

Shadow ban the comment for people abusing the "flag" button. Downvotes could only gray comments. I hope I am not suggesting morphing HN into old.reddit

Better still:

- get rid of the default greying-out, make it something you need to opt-in to, i.e. more or less the reverse of the current 'show dead'

- get rid of 'downvote to disagree' as a policy since it reinforces group think

- Add 'reason for downvote' and make it mandatory to choose one, then add meta-moderation to combat downvoting abuse

- remove 'flag', its function can be incorporated in 'reason for downvote'

All this can be put behind the existing downvote button, the interface does not need to change except for the removal of the default greying-out of downvoted comments.

> get rid of 'downvote to disagree' as a policy

Is that a current policy?

Yes:

> dang on Jan 12, 2018 | parent | context | favorite | on: Chinese Workers Abandon Silicon Valley for Riches ... [1]

> Things pg said about downvotes:

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392347

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691

> It's how HN has always worked, and in my opinion needs to. A site that cares about discussion quality needs those white blood cells.

The first links reads:

   pg on Feb 16, 2008 | parent | context | favorite | on: PG on trolls

   I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement.
   Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it
   seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.

   It only becomes abuse when people resort to karma bombing: downvoting
   a lot of comments by one user without reading them in order to subtract
   maximum karma. Fortunately we now have several levels of software to
   protect against that.

The second link:

   pg on Dec 10, 2008 | parent | context | favorite | on: News.YC Growth

   Downvoting has always been used to express disagreement.

The third link:

   pg on June 15, 2009 | parent | context | favorite | on: The default form of disagreement

   IIRC we first had this conversation about a month after launch.
   Downvotes have always been used to express disagreement. Or more
   precisely, a negative score has: users seem not to downvote
   something they disagree with if it already has a sufficiently
   negative score.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314

Ah, thanks.

I was only looking at the newsfaq and newsguidelines pages.

Wow, never seen all the main comments flagged before. There was nothing to justify that. Generally I find HN to be very well behaved.

It's absolutely vile seeing these comments all flagged. Using moderation tools to silence people feels extremely poisonous and I hate it.

I share some of the hackles of requiring phone number verification.

Still, I can't help but be a bit disappointed that none of the comments are really speaking to the architecture & change this article is talking about.

Hi. I've never used Signal, but have considered it.

Can you explain the downsides? An ELI5 would be ideal as I'm non-technical, but I understand if that's asking too much :)

Thanks!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com