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Comment by thenaturalist | Hacker News Reader

It would be really, really great when the open Israel hate and borderline Antisemitism displayed in many threads related to these topics could be moderated to the same tune.

It's the same hate that has killed Jewish Americans in the past year.

Many of these replies are very low on facts, very high on emotionally loaded subjective opinions.

It's a challenging task as BBC and so many more Western media outlets had to retract and amend their own faulty reporting over the last few months, but if we're talking about the spirit of the site, everyone should be held accountable equally.

Example at the top of this thread:

> Why is the president of the United States protecting a blood soaked war criminal?

https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=46006941&goto=item%3Fi...

View on HN

HN mods act on behaviour rather than position.

If someone's violating HN's guidelines (<https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>) or FAQ (<https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html>), flag the post or comment. Both links are found at the bottom of most HN pages. If there's an egregious violation, email mods at hn@ycombinator.com.

Most moderation (that is, votes and flags) are by members of the site, mods step in very rarely, usually guided by flags or emails as noted above. Member actions may well be driven by factors differing from those of mods, part of the moderators' job is to correct for those biases.

This reads like a sleek way to weasel oneself out of responsibility.

So what you're effectively implying is that the court of public (in Israel instances very clearly biased) opinion rules the site?

So guidelines for thee (Israel supporters) but not for me (Israel haters and Antisemites).

A famous poem from Martin Niemöller, who actually lived through facism comes to mind:

    First they came for the Communists
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a Communist

    Then they came for the Socialists
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a Socialist

    Then they came for the trade unionists
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a trade unionist

    Then they came for the Jews
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a Jew

    Then they came for me
    And there was no one left
    To speak out for me

It can be frustrating, and I'd engaged for years on HN with the assumption that The Mods were Biased Against My Point of View. This itself is a common trope: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...> and <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...>.

I've changed that opinion, both by observing their behaviour (you can follow both your own, and any users' threads, on HN, including mods, which I review fairly frequently), and overall site characteristics (see: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...> and <https://toot.cat/deck/tags/HackerNewsAnalytics> and related).

I do have some remaining concerns that HN's policies can amount to tone-policing, and that issues which are themselves long-standing or recurring, regardless of other merits, tend to trip across the guidelines to a greater extent, which imposes a natural bias against them.

That said, if you do want to discuss a volatile, persistent, or repetitive issue, you'll find far greater success if you do so with HN's principles and guidelines in mind. It might possibly also make you a more efficient advocate and debater.

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