7k more signatures needed on the Snowden pardon petition | Hacker News Reader

7k more signatures needed on the Snowden pardon petition

petitions.whitehouse.gov

166 pointsDanielRibeiro11 comments

Looks like this post is being flagged. 55 points in 2 hours and it sits near the bottom.

I think this is a misuse of the flag button given HN guidelines. I don't see how this post is spam or offtopic: "If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link."

I'm seeing this more and more on HN. The flag button is being used to "downvote" posts that present a point of view that some disagree with. I find this trend disturbing.

I think users have taken to flagging in response to users automatically up-voting stories related to the NSA scandal, and thus filling the front page with useless duplicate stories. So, now, HN has two problems.

I often flag duplicate posts so they'll drop out in favor of the first post. I did not flag this one but it is a duplicate post. The WH petition to pardon him has been posted before very recently. Adding a garbage url parameter to the end may fool HN de-duping algorithm but not humans. Same with changing the title.

Take care to notice the "if you think" part of that clause.

It's not a petition to pardon Snowden, it's a petition for a White House response on the topic of pardoning Snowden.

Key difference.

Petitions is a perfect outlet to convey to crowds an illusion of having control over [insert your problem here]. Lack of control is the first cause of rebellion. Rebellions are expensive to contain. Petitions are the vehicle to detour crowd's attention away from the real cause of [insert your problem here].

5600... keep it up...

3k signatures left (presumably this means 4k signatures happened in the past 5 hours).

We're going to have to switch the title to 6K here right away.

And now NSA has 100k targets.

False. The NSA already has 7 billion targets.

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