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Comment by TheGuyWhoCodes | Hacker News Reader

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Funnily enough I just finished responding to someone who makes the opposite complaint about us: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403907. Notice that word "always", which both of you use. Interesting, no?

People with strong passions on a topic always feel like the moderators are against them. (As you see, I'm not immune to "always" perceptions either!)

I wish we could do something about that—I don't enjoy having so many people, from all sides of every divisive topic, feeling like we're against them when we're not. However, after years of observing this and thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that it's inevitable. The cognitive bias underlying it is just ironclad. We all share this bias, which is why your complaint and the complaint of someone on the opposite side are basically the same.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

It's true that HN has hosted several major threads about Israel/Gaza, but it's also true that many (perhaps a hundred times as many) submissions on the topic have ended up flagged and we haven't turned off the flags. I don't see an "always" in there.

As for Saturdays—that factor is so far from affecting how we moderate HN that I had to puzzle for a bit over what you might mean. Nor does this discussion strike me as one-sided. People wouldn't be disagreeing with each other if it were.

You do good work Dang. I'd love to buy you a beer sometime.

dang I cannot respect you enough. Thank you. I have strong feelings about Palestine and learned quite long ago how powerless my rhetoric is. Although I believe I see the truth, it's clear the world needs yet more time. The only thing that must be done now is to facilitate discourse and to leave the flow of information unimpeded. Time will humble us all.

[flagged]

I would be very surprised if the majority, or even a significant fraction, of those who are on the "Israel" side were observing Jews. Jews are probably a minority of Israel-supporting commenters, and observing Jews are, in my experience, a minority of these Jews.

I agree, that argument seemed fairly wrong to me.

It's some people, but a minority, I'm fairly certain.

That's a pretty serious accusation, and I don't think you can actually back that up with anything.

Online, pretty much any time Israel is discussed, the majority of commenters (or articles) are anti-Israel. Regardless of why you think that is, it's just a fact. You can't blame dang for that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com