I was seeing this on the front page of HN mere moments ago and now it’s gone.
if more people downvote / individual flag it than upvote it, then how did it rise to the front page to start with?
I recall multiple HN Epstein discussions that didn't get flagged (in the sense of Net Flagged status assignment by HN, not talking about individual acts of individual flagging)
It would really help the discourse if HN used separate terms for the button for users to individually cast a flag, and the [flagged] marking by HN: a suggestion would be to give the latter a different word like [perverse], as the literal meaning of perverse come from Latin "per" (away) "vertere" (to turn), i.e. "turned away" or "to turn a blind eye" as one would say in English.
That would seem more apt as it describes what is done, and allows HN commenters to talk about the difference between individual acts of users pressing the "flag" button versus HN mapping that to an attention modulating action.
For example discussions about the method of mapping upvotes, views, flaggings, and their relative timing distributions, onto the either "attended" or "perverse" status.
> if more people downvote / individual flag it than upvote it, then how did it rise to the front page to start with?
It's because most of the flags only happen later. Upvotes get a post onto the frontpage, then other users see it on the frontpage and think "wtf? that doesn't belong on HN" and flag it. This is especially common with sensational or outrageous stories, since those qualities inevitably attract upvotes—but then later they attract flags. You can think of flags as a bit like an immune system in that sense.
This happened the last time this was posted too. Sam Altman deserves the right to defend himself in court as does Ann to tell her story (who personally I believe).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37785072
The good news is that with the lawsuit it will be in the news more and much harder to silence, maybe at some point we can have a proper discussion about it on HN without people (or more likely bots) trying to memoryhole it every single time.
And that doesn't even take into account the number of people who consider all discussions of this kind to be categorically off topic, and would flag it on principle regardless of the context.
You can complain to the mods all you like but there's nothing you can do about the zeitgeist. The mods also won't change their own policies.
More here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42637131
As for Sam: this site has hosted countless negativity fests about Sam (as well as other celebrities people love to post about). This story is different, and the way we're handling it would be the same if you replaced his name with anyone else's.
Edit: You can downvote my comments and censor my account all you want. I learned today that to engage with this site one must take an oppositional stance. I'll just make a new account since this one is clearly compromised. I encourage everyone to do the same. Hell make 10 every time you see you're censored.
I didn't downvote you, and indeed no one on HN (including me) can downvote a direct reply to them.
You're telling me there were 40+ flags on this? GTFO.
I was seriously using this site for fun, but this is just straight bullshit so now you've turned this user into someone who was enthusiastic to someone who knows this place is garbage. Streisand effect on steroids.
It doesn't change the important point, though, which is that your submission was downranked because the flags won over the upvotes. It just means that the flags happened while the story was on /newest rather than the frontpage. Actually that is is an even stronger community response.
For the reason I already explained: rank is computed from upvotes and flags, not just upvotes. The flag input proved stronger than the upvote input.
I don't lie to users, partly because it would make me feel bad, and partly because it would be dumb. I'm not going to do anything to risk the good will of the community, which is the only value that HN really has.
It's true that I make mistakes, but that's different from lying, obviously. I can't not make mistakes but I can and do correct them when I find out about them.
and yup... the thread is gone.
When an organization does both, it has perverse incentives such as maximizing add-profit or user-engagement by building echo chambers instead of doing what benefits the users - such as maximizing truth-seeking and getting an accurate picture of opinions among the general population.