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Comment by tomp | Hacker News Reader

2 - Yes.

Re: controversy - ok, so the same as GitHub or Reddit, you just arbitrarily choose what to take down and when. In particular, this leaves all repositories open to media-induced attention and controversy, followed by a takedown. IMO, having an explicit, well-defined policy would be much better, even if it's highly restrictive, as long as it's objective (i.e. no "offended" and similar) and changes aren't applied retroactively.

I agree that being open source helps, and I thank you for that, but I still wish there was a hosted site with a large community safe from censorship.

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>In particular, this leaves all repositories open to media-induced attention and controversy, followed by a takedown.

It should be emphasized that this, rather than the possibility of censorship by GitLab's staff on their own initiative, is the main concern here.

On the other hand, what incentives does GitLab have to host controversial projects? The kind of person who appreciates it is not the exactly the social or technological trendsetter at the moment. It would make a good marketing point for a niche repository hosting service targeting a "red tribe" or "gray tribe" audience* but a mainstream service could rationally choose to not get involved with it.

* https://paxdickinson.wordpress.com/2014/10/27/the-rise-of-th...

We don't want to be a trendsetter in allowing grey content. I would like to be leading in making a clear policy supported by the GitLab community, but I think that will be difficult.

> The kind of person who appreciates it is not the exactly the social or technological trendsetter at the moment.

I'm not so sure about that. Of course, I might be wrong, especially as I'm not really involved with the technological/programming community (especially not the US one), but to me it seems that it's mainly the media driving the politically-correct everything-offends-me culture and igniting scandal after scandal. Many people are quite appalled by these puritan witch-hunts and victimhood competitions, as they realize how chilling the effects are, and what the endgame of the censorship slippery-slope is.

But then again, many just don't care at all. Just like with mass surveillance and mass lies about e.g. weapons of mass destruction.

I would love an "explicit, well-defined policy". And I'm pretty sure Reddit would love one too. But it is hard to make one, do you have any examples of policies you like? It usually is hard to pin it down (I know it when I see it).

Ironically, the rules of reddit [1] are IMO pretty good guidelines. A code/document-hosting website would probably also want to specify something like "nothing illegal", to avoid DMCA/piracy/copyright issues.

Obviously, reddit doesn't abide by it's own rules. That would require balls of steel (or equivalent for corporations), especially in the face of controversies such as The Fappening.

I see a reference to link [1] but not the link itself. I assume you are referring to https://www.reddit.com/rules/ I think I just saw them introduce other rules last week or so that were much more ambiguous.

Yes, I'm an idiot, I forgot the link. That's exactly what I was referring to - these rules, not the ambiguous rules that reddit actually applies on their site these days.

I think these rules have proved that they were too simplistic, the celebrity photo scandal caused https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2x0g9v/from_...

I don't think we want to host nudes without consent on GitLab.com

I'm sorry, but I cannot see taking those projects down as "censorship".

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