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Comment by sigma5 | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

I've posted about this several times and will try to find some of those links for you, but the short version is that posts on all sides of this topic get flagged quickly (by users), and mods turn off the flags on limited occasions—mostly when some significant new information arises and there's at least some chance of a substantive discussion about it. The current story clears both of those bars, so I've turned off the flags on it.

It's pretty important that most stories about this conflict and similar current affairs get flagged, because otherwise HN's front page would consist of little else, and that's not the purpose of the site. But it's also important the the topics not be ignored completely, even though they're painful. There's no happy medium here, unfortunately.

Edit: here are some links to previous explanations. If you (or anyone, of course) have a look at these and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39920732 (April 2024)

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=39161344 (Jan 2024)

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

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

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657527 (Dec 2023)

Maybe these slipped through the cracks since they also seem to clear both those bars yet were allowed to be flagged:

Israel Says Iran Launched Drones at Its Territory in Retaliatory Strike https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40026150

Iran said to begin attack on Israel, launching drones https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40025617

How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers

I have a follow up question: If both sides of this topic are quickly flagged, then why do mods consistently intervene to the detriment one side?

Do you have specific evidence of this? Such as some sort of meta analysis that shows more pro-Israel stories making it through, and more pro-Palestine stories getting buried? Such an analysis would also need to account for differing quality as well. That is, you could say "100 pro-Palestine stories were banned, but only 10 pro-Israel stories were banned in this time period", but if 90 of those banned pro-Palestine stories were of the form "Israel sucks and Israeli citizens should all die", then I don't think that statistic would make your case.

These threads are absolutely cursed. They get vicious quickly. The patterns set up quick as Loctite glue, excluding all but dedicated partisans (and a few weirdos like me), forming little anaerobic pockets of lactic acid poisoning any bud of curiosity, the core purpose of the site. And the threads go on for-ev-er. We had one run for over a week.

I'm not happy with this outcome. I could enjoy nerding out on the politics and diplomacy of the ICC. I think lots of people here have useful things to say about what's happening here. But I sure as shit flagged this story, because none of that will happen. It'll just be people yelling at each other endlessly.

There are other venues to have this conversation in. Doesn't have to be here.

pedantic offtopic:

"forming little anaerobic pockets of lactic acid poison"

Aerobic metabolism is actually worse than anaerobic metabolism.

Anaerobic conditions tend to result in fermentation by fungi and other incomplete metabolism by bacteria. We even recycle lactic acid because it is energy rich.

Aerobic metabolism has "toxic" results= CO2, Sulfur gases, Urea, phosphorous compounds. Very energy depleted molecules that only specialized organism can process.

For anaerobic bacteria, Bacteroides and Clostridium come to mind. Everything else I can think of CAN thrive in aerobic conditions: Mycobacterium, Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, Escherichia , Salmonella...

The "toxic" metabolites aren't a sustainability problem though as long as the ecosystem forms closed cycles. Presumably it even helps biodiversity.

Generally I'd probably judge metabolism mostly based on power density and energy availability. How does anaerobic compare on that front?

Though archaea tend to be anaerobic, and we should obviously all strive to be more like archaea, so maybe you have a point…

It's really interesting you're willing to and do preemptively apply guilt by association to everyone (by flagging) instead of downvoting/flagging specific comments, suppressing the whole conversations.

It's Minority Report you're engaging in, no?

Have you thought about this before? Do you apply guilt by association in your thinking in other places in your life?

I'm seriously curious if you've self-reflected on this - and it's not intended as an attack or putdown of any sort.

Why not allow the "lots of people here have useful things to say about what's happening here" and allow the "low quality" comments be suppressed-flagged?

One problem though is we have people who apply guilt by association to everyone downvoting anything they interpret however they likely with bias interpret - but you believe you're competent enough to make that judgement call, to be "judge, jury and execution" instead of perhaps just not engaging in threads that bother you too much to filter through?

That's why I flag em. They never lead to fruitful discussion even though I wish it would! I think though it's possible it would require way too much moderation- the juice ain't worth the squeeze.

I flag both sides of these because Hacker News has no unique perspective to add to any of these conversations. There's a million places to have these conversations. If anything, dodging them is the challenge.

Basically, if the resulting HN news discussion is indistinguishable from an X thread except that the post size limit is larger, there's no reason for it to be here.

And my pre-emptive response to pretty much every "but" is you've already got millions of places to have this conversation. Nobody's getting squelched, no solution is being missed because nobody here has the solution, no unique insight is being missed.

There's very little HN has a unique perspective to add to. Tech, science, and startup topics can be discussed just as easily on Reddit or lobsters.

While I generally don't like political discourse here, I do think that there are differences in the way the discussions generally go. There are clear biases from the kind of people who are attracted to HN that are different from other forums.

I agree with your "no unique perspective" point, but I don't think that's, well, the point. I would rather have a discussion about nearly any topic on HN than in most/all other places. I think the quality of discussion here is generally much higher than most/all other places.

Your reference to X/Twitter is in a way the point for me: I never really enjoyed Twitter when it was Twitter, and since the Musk acquisition I actively avoid it like the plague (I've deleted the app off my phone, and have signed out on the web to raise the barrier for me). I don't want to have conversations there, ever, really. I don't agree that resulting HN discussion on a topic like this would be indistinguishable from a discussion on X; I still believe the quality here will be higher.

I do agree that HN isn't for every single topic under the sun. But I hope we can both agree that there's no absolute arbiter of what should and shouldn't be here. It's ultimately a matter of subjective opinion, and even the people who run the site aren't going to be absolutist about it in most cases. I think in general there's a decent balance struck: while an article like this might not be completely on topic for HN, it's not completely off topic either, as long as articles about this topic don't dominate the front page, and we mostly only see articles with new information, and not just re-hashes of stuff that's already been reported on (and discussed here) for days/weeks/months.

I disagree: for many of these topics, hackernews is, to me, a source of more level headed discussion and an opportunity to see both sides in a reasonable way. Yes, the quality does go down a lot, but it's still better than in the other sites I read.

Unfortunately this dynamic is unstable: the more it happens, the less it can continue. It's only because these threads are fairly rare that it works at all—if it does work at all. Having just had to post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40418629 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40418627 in a thread from 2 weeks ago, I'm not so sure.

Since HN is an open system with respect to the rest of the internet, the sad truth is that there's a cap on how good it can ever get. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

"Sir, this is a Wendy's" is the short of it.

Hacker News is a social news website focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship.

Just because the Current Thing is the Most Important Thing That Ever Happened, it doesn't make it an appropriate topic for HN. There's always something historically important going on. Anyone can go on to one of the hundreds of places not dedicated to tech news and entrepreneurship, of which there is effectively one on the Internet.

> "Sir, this is a Wendy's" is the short of it.

Nah Sire, that ain't it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39161344

>I'm afraid the answer is boringly straightforward: users flagged those articles, and either we didn't see them or we chose not to turn off the flags. Most likely we didn't see them. The usual pattern is that flags come from a 'coalition' of users: some because they hold opposing views, while others just think the story doesn't belong on HN. Maybe they think it's off-topic or otherwise against the site guidelines, or they think the story has already been covered a lot recently, or who knows what.

In other words, "Sir, this is a Wendy's."

A cabal of motivated users burying a story isn't analogous to an employed staff of a restaurant refusing to serve anything but what's on the menu.

"Sir, this is a Wendy's" is unrelated to ordering off-menu. It's a response where someone delivers an overly detailed or unrelated speech in a setting where it is entirely inappropriate—such as a fast-food restaurant like Wendy's. It's a brusque reminder to someone that their current behavior or conversation is out of place and irrelevant to the current context. It is often used when someone is being overly dramatic, off-topic, or unnecessarily complex in a simple or straightforward situation.

> unrelated ... inappropriate ... out of place ... irrelevant ... off-topic ... unnecessarily complex

This article was none of that and the fact that it was unflagged (by mods or otherwise) puts this subthread to bed.

Note the original comment:

>Can HN moderators explain why and how the majority of anti Israel posts get flagged quickly ? If HN is pro israel, moderators should update the website guidelines to explicitly say that.

This is not about this story. It asserts that dang is "pro-Israel" and that HN has a group of Zionists that flag anything anti-Israel. dang stated why these stories get flagged and generally by whom, which had a banal answer. There's not a conspiracy against anti-Israel posts, there's a group of people that want certain hysterical people to stop polluting the commons with their off-topic divisive and histrionic screeds.

> hysterical people stop polluting commons with ... divisive and histrionic screeds

What a vile thing to say. Oft times the world is a reflection of self, in that, we are what we accuse others of.

Sir, this is a Wendy's.

Nah, that ain't it: https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/

Probably best to avoid charged words like 'cabal' on this of all topics.

I haven't seen any evidence that the flags aren't in good faith, including from users who feel the most passionately, and there are many of those on both sides.

You're right. Thanks.

Substantive stories are allowed on HN - therefore it's not against the site guidelines, unless you think genocide/war crime charges being levied against Israel and Hamas' leaders is common run-of-the-mill, not once-in-a-lifetime politics?

>Substantive stories are allowed on HN - therefore it's not against the site guidelines, unless you think [...] is common run-of-the-mill, not once-in-a-lifetime politics?

This is the rhetorical frame that has been used for the last decade to justify diluting topical spaces with thinly veiled culture warring by the extremely online for whom every new media cycle is another entirely new Armageddon.

I respectfully disagree with the notion that every current outrage or controversy should be treated as the paramount issue necessitating everyone's unquestioning attention in unrelated spaces.

Participation in culture war skirmishes is not mandatory - I don't read the vast majority of links or discussions posted to HN.

Ironically, preemptively preventing any discussion on topics you don't like on ideological grounds, by means of flagging is partaking in the culture wars.

Politics is considered off-topic, by the site guidelines.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922426

True. Still, I'm trying to explain why a post like this would get flagged. I am not intending to insist that it must be flagged.

Yes it's common unimportant news that ranks below the people that were murdered in Afghanistan by a terrorist attack.

because users with enough reputation can flag things

And one hand sadly even now there are way to many people (e.g. politicians in the country I live) which prefer keep their simple black/white/good/evil world view wear blinders and label anything against Israel as anti driven by antisemitism. That Israel did so themself to doge criticism doesn't help here either. Nor does it help that a lot of antisemitic people do take advantage of this situation to spread their propaganda, sometimes hidden behind a layer of seemingly reasonable arguments.

On the other hand there are enough people which do have a mindset that because what Hamas did the actions by Israel might not be okay but tolerable. I mean especial in more fascist leaning circles you will find a lot of moralistically praising "acting with a iron fist" weather that's in child education, fighting crime or retaliatory military action.

Honestly the situation is a scary mess, with no good way to fix it and where right and wrong become increasingly meaningless in face of a potentially never ending cycle of violence.

Most political posts get flagged. Better for the community if you ask me. Last thing we need is to get on each other's throat.

There are several other topics that also get flagged into oblivion fairly quickly. However I won't spoil the fun by saying what they are.

Pro Israel articles get flagged much faster.

On any topic this divisive, everyone with strong feelings is certain that their side gets the worse treatment.

It's not anti Israel, ICC targets individuals not nations. Also, being pro Israeli doesn't equal supporting genocide, supporting the two states solution doesn't equal supporting Hamas.

Are you for real? Most posts about the conflict that I encounter here are vile anti-israeli propaganda, and the comments aren't any better.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40418931

cuz people are sick of same thing being pushed by both sides.

ICC just said both sides are guilty of warcrimes.

Paint me shocked and surprised.

Actually, I am surprised that both sides got indicted...

Huh.

I felt that it was pretty obvious, once one was read up on the law, that this would be the result. I'd expected arrest warrants for a larger group (maybe 10-16 people, thereabout), but I wasn't surprised by that it was a small group either.

surprised how?

I, for one, did not expect the rumoured arrest warrant for Netanyahu. Indicting a government coalition made up of several political parties is quite different from indicting a specific prime minister. I think just about everyone expected the ICC to condemn both Hamas and the Israeli government, but I would've only expected warrants out for the Hamas members (as they're classified as terrorists rather than politicians by just about everyone).

In the same vein, I would expect "China/Russia/America found guilty of war crimes" but not "arrest warrant out for Biden/Putin/Xi".

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