Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43684536 - April 2025 (1399 comments)
Avoiding too much repetition is a core principle of this place [1]. To get a sense of how repetitive these discussions are, just look at the comments in the current thread—they could just as easily have been posted to the previous thread.
The way HN operates with respect to political stories is clear and stable, and has been for many years: some stories with political overlap are ok [2], but there isn't room on the frontpage for all of them (not even 5% of them, really). Frontpage space is the scarcest resource that exists here [3], and HN is not a current affairs site [4].
If you, or anyone, will familiarize yourselves with the explanations in these links, and then still have a question that I haven't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[4] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
This principle is applied very selectively though: The homepage has been full of insignificant iterations of overly hyped tech products for years now.
It is very hard to imagine all these submissions of announcements of products with monthly release cycles gratifying anyone's intellectual curiosity. Yet it apparently does because they can stay in the homepage for 24 hours.
But for some reason, something as unprecedented as the United States government threatening Harvard with a xenophobic ban is deemed "repetitive"?
It's not possible for moderation to be consistent because we don't read, or even see, most of what gets posted here. There's far too much.
There are other, less obvious factors affecting this too. Here's a post where I went into this a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787306.
Btw, regarding this:
> insignificant iterations of overly hyped tech products for years now
HN's moderation system downweights those even more regularly than we downweight (some) political posts. Here's an explanation from a few years ago, which caused quite a stir if I remember correctly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23071428 (May 2020).
In both cases—incremental product releases on the one hand, and political news on the other—some posts still make it through through to the front page, and in both cases the users who want more of that category feel like it's unduly suppressed, while users who want less of that category feel like HN is overrun with it.
The previous discussion was about an April 11, 2025 joint letter to Harvard President Alan Garber from the Commissioner of the Federal Aquisition Service, General Services Administration, the Acting General Counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Acting General Counsel of the Department of Education.
https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...
Discussion of the April 11th letter occurred in stories submitted at 2025-04-14T18:40:22 and 2025-04-14T18:13:07
This discussion is about an April 16, 2025 letter to Maureen Martin at Harvard's International Office from the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/60233385...
This story was submitted 2025-04-17T10:42:01. Discussion of this letter on April 14th would have been impossible. It was not sent until April 16th.
As one might guess, the letters make different requests. The threatened consequences for not complying are also different. Different letters, different senders, different recipients, different sets of requests, different types of potential consequences for noncompliance, e.g., cancelling funding versus refusing to grant student visas. Are these truly the same topic. Let the reader decide.
Is it possible the reason for these stories getting flagged is because HN users with flagging privileges do not want to them discussed. Not because of repetition but because the discussions are often low quality or offensive to them in some way.
One could argue HN routinely keeps having the same discussions about the same topics, even going so far as to allow HN users to resubmit stories for discussion. Hence, comments frequently note "past discussion".
For example, an HN Poll last year showed most HN readers who vote in polls thought "AI" was mostly hype. Comments have also suggested readers are tired of the hype. Yet they are still being forced to see/hide stories about "AI" every day on HN. Sometimes it feels like HN commenters are literally being forcefed the same tired, old topics and coaxed to repeat their same old opinions, or worse, their favourite memes, over and over again.
I am not suggesting there is anything HN can do about this problem. But I am inclined to agree with the GP comment; the current flagging behaviour mirrors the worst of HN commenting behaviour. It is a low quality, cowardly attempt at moderation that does not even seem to work. We are now consistently seeing flagged stories remain on page 1.
There is no "the" reader. There's a statistical cloud of readers with highly variant preferences.
You guys need to understand that the community is divided about these questions. I don't mean divided politically on partisan lines (though that as well), I mean divided around what sorts of topics are the best fit for the site.
There are those who feel like each letter to each government agency is a major new story that obviously deserves frontpage time; and there are those who feel like HN is overrun with this sort of thing already. Ditto for every major topic including, as you say, AI: some feel like there's too much, some feel like there's not enough.
There's no HN user, including me, who's satisfied with the balance of stories on the front page. The more passionate you (I don't mean you personally, but all of us) are about a particular topic, the more it feels like the topic is being unfairly and outrageously suppressed, whether by user flags or the mods or both.
This is ultimately all coming from the fundamentals of how HN works—from its initial conditions, if you like—and those aren't likely to change. Feelings about it do uptick during times of political intensity, such as now, but the underlying phenomenon is consistent and has been for many years.
Edit: here's me making a similar point from 5 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22644521, in case anyone was thinking this is a new phenomenon...
The tug-of-war between upvotes and flags is always happening on HN and is a core part of how the software and the community function.
Given that there is no way to downvote a story the way that one can downvote a comment, perhaps some people use flagging as a way to "downvote" stories.
https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2025-05-01
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43856795
2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43852145
3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43859814
None flagged for "repitition"
Whether some HN practice has always been the case or whether it will remain so for all time is irrelevant. What's relevant is that aggressive flagging is happening now. Commenters share their thoughts about it. Some disagree. Some agree. Discussion continues.
Why not? Why does only the flagging need to be explained but not, say, the aggressive reposting of stories that are typically, and by long-established practice, offtopic for HN? These are clearly two sides of the same phenomenon, it's not obvious that the flagging alone here should be treated as some sort of anomaly.
HN is designed to hide political discussions. If it weren't, the front page would be nothing but political discussions.
unless they're PG political posts, ahem
They are called “essays”. /s
Why it's being flagged? People hiding behind the non-political rule are suppressing information and discussion.
This site is owned by ycombinator, who have a motivation to "not rock the boat", so such suppression is ignored.
I guess in time we'll see whether that's a good decision for them or not.
Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43684536 - April 2025 (1399 comments)
You guys should familiarize yourselves with how this site is operated, because it has been explained endlessly (to the limit of my patience, in fact) over many years, and the assumptions you're making do not match reality. If you want to do that, you'll find entrypoints into thousands of past explanations in my comment upthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43724590.
I’d argue that leadership of ycombinator is glad where this boat is sailing. Just look who are they inviting to advertised AI startup school at the bottom of this site.
https://www.404media.co/leaked-palantirs-plan-to-help-ice-de...
David Sacks is the country's official Crypto czar now.
Chamath Palihapitiya brags that he's happy that his money can now buy access/influence /power. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-do...
- Gumroad is not a YC-funded company and its founder has no influence on YC or HN.
- Joe Gebbia is just one of more than ten thousand YC-backed founders and does not represent YC or influence HN.
- Of the other people named, none has any official role or influence at YC, and only one of them has ever had a formal role; a brief, minor role that ended over seven years ago. At least two of those named have had very public, bitterly hostile disputes with former presidents of YC and founders of notable YC companies.
- The only person with any role/influence at YC who publicly espouses any position on U.S. federal politics is Paul Graham, who tweets almost daily in staunch opposition to the current U.S. administration.
- HN moderators and YC management know that HN is only valuable if it is a place where people can find content and discussions that engage intellectual curiosity, and the surest way to destroy its value is to allow it to be captured by any political or ideological agenda.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLhHuOPAXZQ&ab_channel=AdamM...
I’m pretty sure anything that gets more than twice as many comments than upvotes gets a huge downrank penalty, such that they would almost never hit the front page without moderator intervention.
translation: "we have a vested stake in the status quo."
active silencing on political issues is in and of itself a political stance.
That is only flagged kind of article. Other political articles are fine.
Decision to be non political would lead to different selection of articles to be banned.
If your neighbours are being taken away by state police there is no non-political move you can make. Helping the police is political, ducking away and pretending it is not helping is political and hiding them is political as well.
While I understand that this site tries to not drown in the flaming garbage site that online political discourse can be, if I — the exact demographic who startups would like to have working for them would list precisely this as my main concern stopping me from moving into the US it is a bit odd that it is verboten to discuss it.
Hackers historically were (and are) extremely critical of authority and for the freedom of knowledge, and now we can't discuss an direct attack at those very values on a site that calls itself Hackernews? Come on.
If you want the political stuff & the controversial stuff, you can add /active after the URL to HN main page.
The fact that there is an /active tab and flagged submissions can still be voted & commented on, tells me that while dang don't want it to be the face of HN, he's fine that people discuss it (as long as you comment with civility). If there was some tinfoil conspiracy, the tab would've been deleted.
I'm guilty that l now usually check /active and main page.
You know, some of the high-horse, HN readers are quick to say "social media, bad" and anything bashing social media (including blogs) sky rocket up to main page. "reddit sucks" is another common one. I mean I usually agree to that sentiment, but if you check /active posts, the comments, where things go, it resembles any other social media slop more than HN.
I spend more time on /active, sadly. Maybe those navel-gazing orangutans are actually the ones making sure this is not reddit or Facebook for techies rather than boomers
Where on earth could you live that American politics are irrelevant to you? Boring sure, but irrelevant? Unless you live, well, on Jupiter these days, there's not an inch of the globe that's untouched by the effects of American politics.
"Meh, I don't care what Nazi Germany is up to, it's irrelevant to me"
Just because someone coined a law on the internet decades ago does not invalidate the comparison. Neither does you finding it repetitive and boring. If anything, you should be more concerned, not apathetic.
come on, probably 75% of all the posts on HN are boring and irrelevant to me; that doesn't mean I go downvoting them all
I look for the stuff I'm interested in, and ignore the rest.