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Comment by giraffe_lady | Hacker News Reader

I am suggesting HN change its moderation policies in light of having been inadvertently and effectively used for far right propaganda and your rebuttal is along the lines of "no, because it wasn't effective." Do I have that right or would you like to clarify? It seems like my position is that I believe HN has a greater reach and impact than the editorial team of HN itself does?

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

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38210959

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36269058

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These aren't stories, they're random comments on random threads over the past two years. Some of them, had you flagged them and mailed hn@yc about them, likely would have gotten moderated (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41658850, for example). But moderators don't see all the comments, so if you want something done about them, you have to help make that happen.

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.

Thing is, that kind of vitriol is the whole point of hateful rhetoric, by and large. It's what occasionally makes "hate" appealing to some people in the first place - see your local hate-filled social media network for evidence of that. Posting "hateful rhetoric ... coolly and without vitriol", intentionally or not, is an excellent way of unpacking it for everyone else and showing just how pointless it really is.

Sure; the system we have in place is rather good at handling overtly vitriolic comments (my experience is generally that user flags kill them before emails to the moderators land). I'm just leaving open space for critiques of HN moderation; those are a fine thing, but they're really only meaningful if you can write the moderation guidelines that fill the gaps you're worried about.

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