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Comment by wantlotsofcurry | Hacker News Reader

Upsetting how quickly the other thread was flagged and downranked.

This is a typical phenomenon when a topic is divisive, and the Israel/Gaza topic is one of the most divisive.

Edit: We sometimes turn off flags when an article contains significant new information and also has at least some chance of providing a substantive basis for discussion. I haven't read the current article yet but it seems like a reasonable candidate for this, so I turned off the flags.

For anyone who wants more information about how we approach doing that, in the context of the current topic, here are some past explanations:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39618973 (March 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435324 (Feb 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435024 (Feb 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39237176 (Feb 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38947003 (Jan 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38749162 (Dec 2023)

Seeing as these discussions are always insta-flagged and you need to revive them to allow for discussion, have you considered adding 'Israel' and 'Palestine to a set of keywords you need to approve to be set as flagged instead of letting automation take over?

Having a human in the loop prevents bad-faith actors from abusing the system to suppress information and discussions.

I think we probably already see the most important ones, such as the one today. If there's an article that particularly deserves having the flags turned off, people can always bring it to our attention at hn@ycombinator.com.

That's kind of a paradox. If people instaflag it, then the chance I will see it is very low unless I'm the submitter.

That's true, but I thought you were asking if we would create a list for us mods to review.

> This is a typical phenomenon when a topic is divisive, and the Israel/Gaza topic is one of the most divisive.

Kind of related thought - is there a topic you think is more divisive? And also, is there some way that this is measured officially or unofficially?

No and in fact my comment originally said "the current topic is perhaps the most divisive HN has ever seen".

Not measured, though, if you mean some kind of quantitative approach.

I wonder how that could be measured.

I also think it's the most divisive topic here (for the last few months at least), but since it's obviously very personal for me, it's hard to know if that's a bias in my view.

> I wonder how that could be measured.

Maybe posts with high Flag and Vouch counts?

I don't think this topic is divisive anymore. I used to be on the fence about the whole conflict despite growing up in a Muslim country and being fed propaganda. But nowadays I can't in any shape or form rationalize Israel 's actions.

The article makes some hard to digest claims, for example:

> According to six Israeli intelligence officers

Not 1 reservist, or 2 retired officers, or 3 contractors, but 6 active serviceman - whose day to day job is to figure out how to hide secrets.

There are more statistically impossible statements.

As someone who sees both sides of this, and as someone who didn't understand this for some time, it's important to understand that one reason a story is likely to get flagged is because users think it's highly unlikely to lead to productive discussion. It doesn't mean it's a bad story, or even unworthy of discussion, but many types of stories seem to, pretty predictably, lead to a cesspool of comments where it's clear most folks have no desire to listen to opposing points of view.

FWIW, I found this to be a really interesting story that I didn't previously know about, so I hope it stays up, and this is a story I'd be willing to vouch for.

>it's highly unlikely to lead to productive discussion.

I guess all you have to do, if you want to suppress information about something, is to ensure that its comments always devolve into unproductive discussions. Funny, I once read about this as a tactic for controlling information flow in online communities...

If only we had a word for this behaviour, for example some nordic folklore creature ?

flagging is voting to censor a particular view. it could have legit uses like spam or toxic comments but just as easy to censor narratives that isn't aligned or clashes with the voter's

im not sure what other tools exist other than a block button like X

There is a system in place for flagging specific comments by users.

Admins can, and do, prune entire branches of comments off of posts.

These two methods would take a bit more work than just banishing the topic entirely, but with topics like the first time that "AI" kill lists are publicized, maybe exceptions should be made.

> users think it's highly unlikely to lead to productive discussion

I wish people would let people decide for themselves what is productive or not...

There's always Twitter/X or Reddit if that's your jam. I just think it's hard to disagree that a huge, if not primary, value people feel they get from HN is the discussion, which is probably unmatched compared to any open forum on the net, and a huge part of that is moderation and curation.

Like I said, I don't agree with this particular topic getting flagged (I saw it go back and forth numerous times), but I also would push back hard on any allegations of "censorship". There are plenty of completely open forums online anyone can access with a click, and HN is most decidedly not that, by design, since the beginning of the site.

Almost all pro Israel posts are flagged so I think it is fair to completely remove the topic in HN. There are only 16m of jews in a world of 8b.

Successful flagging doesn't (just) disable comments, it disables discovery/access.

For a high quality piece of tech-related investigative journalism like this, flagging is simply censorship.

If one don't want to engage, the hide button isn't too far from the flag button. It's important that people have the option to speak freely and openly about this topic, since so many places shut down any conversation that shows sympathy for Palestinians and/or doesn't paint Israel as unequivocally morally good. This is one of the reasons Israel has been able to get away with this behavior for so long.

Considering what regularly doesn't get flagged on this site related to AI, conflict, etc., this topic seems to fit in.

I don't understand why it was flagged, obviously it is a sensitive topic but AI being used to kill people is very clearly a HN-worthy topic

It was flagged because someone doesn't want people seeing this.

It's also currently dropping rank on the front page, despite being heavily upvoted.

Now removed from the front page even without being labeled as flagged.

Discussions with lots of comments are routinely pushed down the stack. dang has commented on that a few times I think. Anyway it's not the subject, just the raw numbers of the activity.

Yeah, you'd hope that a higher level conversation about the use of technology in war, pros/cons, etc could supersede personal political beliefs about this particular conflict. We don't need people's moral judgements on who is right or wrong in this particular case but it would be neat to hear people's thoughts on utilizing information technology as a weapon of war.

One would hope, but I’ve read all 21 comments in this post and not a single one of them meets your criteria.

Let's see how long it takes this time! I'd give it 50% odds of lasting 12 minutes.

Edit: Flagged after less than 9 minutes, I overestimated!

It was flagged in 9, but is now back. Get your comments in while you can!

and then un-flagged right after?

I vouched for it.

Where's this option?

Usually the same place the flag button is. It only appears when a post or commen is flagged/dead.

It wasn't there for me. I vaguely remember it being there before though.

I think sometimes you have to click on the date to go directly to the post/comment, in order to see it.

It seems so. What a ride!

I don't take any issue with people flagging a post, so long as an actual person makes the ultimate decision on whether to keep it up.

This is in contrast to how I feel about a statistical model flagging people to be murdered. That's not even remotely OK, even if the decision to actually carry out the murder ultimately goes through a person. Using a statistical model to choose targets is incredibly naive, and practically guarantees that perverse incentives will drive decision-making.

Is there any consequence for inappropriate flagging?

Not in this instance, I assume. People flagging too much can result in shadowbanning, but perhaps the mods think that flagging posts that might host heated political-religious discussion is ok (even if they don't have such discussion, and even if they are on-topic for HN).

I also don't think there is a way to complain about abusing flags other than emailing the mods; I have no clue about the effectiveness of this complaint.

I have emailed many time over the years. Got a response from dang every single time. Several accounts lost vouching privileges thanks to my emails, among other things — they were vouching clearly guidelines-breaking crap, I drew dang’s attention, and they were penalized. So, if you have a concern, just email.

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