Ask HN: Why are most submission from 404 Media flagged/dead?

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1 point·josefresco··6 comments

See a previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43647143

Tldr (speculative) it's clickbaity and paywalled

Thank you. Curious why do other websites with agressive paywalls get a pass, while 404 Media gets seemingly... organically brigaded? Some of their stories make it though so it's not an "automod" situation.

I think that it is an "automod" situation, since most of the articles are [dead] without being [flagged]. Sometimes, a reader will vouch for a [dead] article which brings it back to life.

That certainly explains it, however it's a questionable decision (IMHO) by mods considering how many paywalled sites are allowed. If 404 Media violated some other policy I'll revise my opinion but so far I've seen no evidence.

Is there a public list of blacklisted domains?

> Is there a public list of blacklisted domains?

I don't know.

Personally, I don't object to this behavior with regards to 404 because most of their articles aren't good and/or on-topic enough to be useful. The ones that are often get vouched for and appear anyway. From where I sit, this seems like the least-worst result.

You guys should follow the site guidelines and send questions to hn@ycombinator.com, where we're actually going to see them! I only saw this randomly and several days late.

The answer is that paywalls are allowed when there are workarounds (such as archive links) which allow ordinary readers to read the article without paying or subscribing, while hardwalled domains (i.e., without such workarounds) are banned.

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