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pvg

You can see some recent mod commentary on this. It's more or less how HN works and is supposed to work:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42777298

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42775648

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42775535

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42775519

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There's a lot of discussion here about work environment and startup culture and I thought it was a valid question to current SpaceX and Tesla employees. I am genuinely curious and thought HN would be the best place to ask this and get some genuine answers.

There isn't anything wrong with the question and the curiosity, it's just that lots of people (in my view, correctly) don't feel it's likely to produce interesting discussion and interesting discussion is what HN is ostensibly for.

So, avoid all transparency and accountability around moderation and then reference vague and subjective terms to dismiss those who rightly complain.

What is the transparency and accountability that ought to happen here that hasn't, specifically?

Any moderation should show who did it. Flagging should show who flagged.

Seems like a simple and transparent way to show how unbiased and well run HN is.

Flagging can be done by any user (above some karma threshold). This is well known and documented in the faq. A log of this would just make for more tiresome meta discussion. Which is also something the guidelines point out.

The interesting thing is that when the topic is "important," there are extreme measures taken by HN moderation.

These measures have previously included overriding user flagging of an arguably shady story, and more often pruning an entire branch of comments out of a post's comment thread.

What we have learned from this event is that HN moderation does not believe that the clear and obvious nazi salutes done by "the richest man in the world," behind the Presidential seal, is an important topic.

HN is a news org. This news event was a litmus test of news orgs. Only a few orgs passed for identifying "important" reality, and HN was not one of them.

I have been a fan of this website's moderation in the past, even when it went against my opinion. Now, I am sorry to say this, but I am truly disgusted.

It's obviously an excuse and not a real reason.

> I have been a fan of this website's moderation in the past

There's your mistake. I haven't for years.

When someone blatantly admitted to creating new accounts to reply to me and circumvent the throttling mechanism and the mods said that for that person it was OK I lost all trust in it.

The richest plutocrat on Earth, now in charge of cutting government regulations, makes multiple emphatic Nazi salutes Day 1 at the inauguration...

Paul Graham: Censoring multiple rapidly popular posts of this is "how HN works and is supposed to work".

... Good to know.

That's not Paul Graham. Paul Graham hasn't been here for years.

That's a relief, thank you.

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