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I explained more here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44572593
You can’t tell me with a straight faith that things are working as intended.
We look at flagged items and determine if they were reasonable given the guidelines. Plenty of people email us to share their thoughts about whether particular stories should be unflagged, and we’re happy to consider reasoned arguments about this.
But if you want HN to be different from what it’s intended to be, you’ll always be frustrated with how we moderate it.
There is a huge amount of evidence now to suggest that the moderating is wildly out of step with the majority opinion on a continuous basis and when asked about it the response is simply to imply it’s a problem with me personally which I know full well not to be true by the fact that certain topics are continually removed from the front page where they are by definition by popular opinion and there has never been a single public action that I could point to that would even begin to acknowledge that there is indeed a small reactionary minority who flag things in ways that have zero resemblance to the stated rules.
People will loudly and proudly on a regular basis talk about how they blindly flag anything that meets their own personal criteria when they could have instead used the hide link just as easily.
There IS a problem here with a small minority of people who continually make decisions on what OTHERS can read, it’s clear as day, you just don’t want to be honest about that fact.
A small contingent of users keeps making the same complaint about the flagging of a category of posts, and their activity indicates they want HN to be different from what it is intended to be.
> certain topics are continually removed from the front page where they are by definition by popular opinion
The role of HN is not to cater to "popular opinion". We very specifically exist to surface projects/topics and host discussions that aren't happening elsewhere.
You keep insisting that it's a "small reactionary minority" suppressing these stories. We know that's not what it is; it's users who understand HN's purpose and want it to focus on what it's intended to be: a site that engages curiosity rather than stirring up rage.
We know that political topics are important, and we do make space for them when there is "significant new information", which, despite these complaints, still ends up being multiple times per week. And we get roughly equal complaints from people that there is too little politics and too much.
You're most welcome to do what others do and email us when there's a story that you sincerely believe is good content for HN, given the guidelines, and we're happy to discuss it and explain our thoughts about it.
But in this same post you’ve said:
1. HN needs to be interesting to the MAJORITY of users.
2. HN is not designed to serve MAJORITY opinion.
3. There is no MINORITY of people flagging stories for disingenuous reasons
4. There is however a MINORITY of people complaining about things being flagged despite repeated and almost daily evidence of the opposite happening.
You won’t even admit that there is a potential problem here that there exists a group of people who flag things entirely on ideological grounds with zero bearing on the rules as they are written.
I understand that you’re a moderator here and I’m not but I think you’re doing a bad job and being either dishonest or intentionally obtuse here. At no point did I ever get the impression there was even the slightest sense of curiosity from the moderation team no matter how many times it was mentioned. It’s always the same reply, things are going exactly as we want them to and you’re crazy to suggest otherwise.
I don't think that things are going "great" or "exactly as they should" on HN or in the world at large. It takes constant effort to keep political/ideological toxicity from both ends of the spectrum from poisoning this place. I would love it if HN could have a positive influence on politics and the broader world, but in reality we don't have much clout. My personal hope is for every person to have the greatest amount of freedom, opportunity, abundance and agency that can possibly be attained, including for the least privileged in society, and I'd happily have that be an ongoing topic of discussion on HN. But interesting new ideas about that are notably missing from the ragey politics-related discussions seem to happen here.
> 1. HN needs to be interesting to the majority of users.
Yes, otherwise the audience will leave and HN will die.
> 2. HN is not designed to serve majority opinion.
By that I mean we're not about catering to people's opinions about politics/ideology the way news media outlets cater to an ideological position (e.g., Fox News).
> 3. There is no minority of people flagging stories for disingenuous reasons
Dan and I have both been doing this job for years and we look at the flagging patterns every day. There are some users who do mis-use the flag feature, and when that happens we turn their flags off.
> 4. There is however a minority of people complaining about things being flagged despite repeated and almost daily evidence of the opposite happening.
The users complaining about "censorship" or "suppression" of a category of stories make up a relatively small cohort of people who want HN to be more focused on that category of stories, yes. But we look at their activity (submissions, comments) and see that what they want HN to be is different from what HN has always been intended to be, which is a site for curiosity, not rage.
If you can frame your arguments in these terms, we'll have a better discussion. I.e., if you can point out the evidence that we're doing a bad job of optimizing HN for curiosity rather than rage.
Flagging bots and users who flag inappropriately don't have much effect here. We review flagged posts, and for any account that is flagging inappropriately, their flags get switched off.
Almost every day the accusation is made that anything critical of the U.S. administration or tech celebrities is censored here. And the response is always the same. This stuff gets flagged, correctly, by users who want HN to stay true to its intended purpose, which is to discuss topics that engage intellectual curiosity.
The day-to-day posts criticizing the U.S. administration or tech celebrities normally don't fit this category, because they generally say the same thing as the version was posted the day before, and the comments in the discussions also say largely the same things.
Still, we frequently turn off flags on politics-related posts, or indeed posts about tech celebrities, when they contain "significant new information" and can sustain a discussion thread that contains new ideas in the comments.
The users who keep complaining that these stories are censored are users who seem to want HN to be something other than what it has always been intended to be.
I regularly see positively rated HN comments that are indistinguishable from stormfront posts 20 years ago. The main stream of tech leadership is directly involved in eliminationist & unconstitutional policies in the US and elsewhere, and uses their authority and influence within the tech industry to promote these racist political platforms.
Any reflection on how HN's moderation policy has allowed them to do so, the impact it has had in providing such fertile ground for them to work in? It seems that what HN was "always intended to be" has turned out to be an effective propaganda tool for one of the most destructive political movements in living memory. I wouldn't feel good about staying the course here.
This is the kind of comment that is only ever made without links that would enable the claim to be evaluated by others.
And the rest of the comment that seems to assert that the political craziness in the world is the fault of HN is pretty wild, but is perhaps an assumption that explains why some people think this is an important place to conduct ideological battle.
We’re a tiny site in the scheme of things. None of the tech leaders who are influential in politics have been active or popular on HN for years, if ever. The HN audience has always been distrustful of big tech and the relationship between corporations and politics. The core HN audience is people who work in tech (mostly employees or freelancers) who are interested learning new things and like to work on interesting projects.
We know we are not - and cannot be - a bubble that’s isolated from the rest of the world. But it’s a mistake to think that HN has any significant influence on politics or the tech leaders who are active in politics.
Here are a few comment examples that it took me not very much time or effort to find. I hope seeing them changes your mind somewhat.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39359199
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41697845
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39823820
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39749415
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40311057
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41658850
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39280659
Most of them, though, are simply comments you and I disagree with. It's an open-access site, people are going to write things you disagree with, and there isn't going to be a moderation rule saying, for instance, that only anti-carceral comments are allowed on the site.
I spend a weird amount of time watching for specific patterns of nasty shit on HN (use the search bar to see if I've missed a race/IQ in the last year) and my experience has been the moderators are as repulsed by toxicity as I am, and they're quick to act.
You're not the first of us to express concerns that the specific moderation principles HN uses are too accommodating to toxic edgelordism (another long-timer once noted that they appear to function as a kind of grooming academy for hateful rhetoric, allowing in almost any sentiment expressed coolly and without vitriol). But improvements aren't as easy as they look. A good exercise: if you think comment moderation is failing because the rules aren't right, propose the next guideline that would fix it.
I've been doing that for years, and some of my guideline proposals have made it in (can't see everyone else's comment scores: you're welcome). Most of the ones that haven't, though, I've come to see would have been unworkable.
This 100%. I would add these tech oligarchs and their captured employees are the users here.
>It seems that what HN was "always intended to be" has turned out to be an effective propaganda tool for one of the most destructive political movements in living memory. I wouldn't feel good about staying the course here.
Perfectly said, if this is what HN wants to be (another propaganda arm of the regime and oligarch mouthpiece) I'm not sure there's a future here.
What we are here for is to find and share interesting new ideas, including/especially ones that can help address the biggest problems in the world (rare as they may be).
I respectfully disagree with your claim that these posts are flagged "correctly". Many of these posts, while related to politics or current news cover highly technical and intellectually intriguing topics. I think it's pretty disingenuous to say these users are acting genuinely in the best interest of the community.
To make matters worse, reputable media outlets like 404 Media who publish highly relevant but critical articles are autoflagged. The reason given "because they have paywall" which is 100% BS.