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Ask HN: How is Trump testing positive for Coronavirus not on the frontpage?

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Re: Ask HN: How is Trump testing positive for Coronavirus not on the frontpage?

#21

Post by plessthanpt05 »

detaro wrote: post #19
plessthanpt05 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Articles about Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, or Chelsea Manning would also be subject to those rules. Agreed. This is selective censorship by the HN moderators (which is fine, as it's clearly up to them as to what's deemed important here, but the rules for being flagged need to be more clear in this manner then).

just to be clear, flagged status is not a moderator action, but done by users.

My question wasn't about flagged status, it was about why this story was not on the frontpage (even though several posts about it at the time had tons of up votes and weren't flagged). I'm assuming the mods were preventing those posts from hitting the frontpage.

Re: Ask HN: How is Trump testing positive for Coronavirus not on the frontpage?

#22

Post by detaro »

plessthanpt05 wrote: post #21
detaro wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just to be clear, flagged status is not a moderator action, but done by users.

My question wasn't about flagged status, it was about why this story was not on the frontpage (even though several posts about it at the time had tons of up votes and weren't flagged). I'm assuming the mods were preventing those posts from hitting the frontpage.

flagging impacts the ranking, even before a [flagged] tag is shown, so when you complain that the discussion about this is not on the front page but somewhere deep down the ranking, you are complaining about user flags. (And after a discussion got enough comments, which it did, all further submissions are duplicates in addition)

Re: Ask HN: How is Trump testing positive for Coronavirus not on the frontpage?

#23

Post by kart23 »

justinzollars wrote: post #9

Does anyone see the bot attack on Trumps Twitter account? That is interesting. They are posting Satanist images with captions in the Aramaic language. If you work at Twitter you might want to get to work and stop this state sanctioned attack on his account.

Did you get a screenshot? This sounds really weird and I'm curious.

Re: Ask HN: How is Trump testing positive for Coronavirus not on the frontpage?

#25

Post by colmvp »

I find it weird how this can't be talked about on HN. This could have profound implications for the country, economy, and upcoming election. The President has been in contact with so many people over the past few days that many senior officials in the government could be infected.

Re: Ask HN: How is Trump testing positive for Coronavirus not on the frontpage?

#27

Post by howlgarnish »

troydavis wrote: post #11
plessthanpt05 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump saying him and Melania testing positive for the Coronavirus four weeks out from the presidential election is huge news. This story is not about politics (i.e. about a political issue), it is about a political/world leader and his wife. Edit: So "TV news" covering the newest iPhone release would probably be off-topic too then based on this reasoning, but this seems to reliably hit the front page of HN everytime…

> Edit: So "TV news" covering the newest iPhone release would probably be off-topic too then based on this reasoning, but this seems to reliably hit the front page of HN everytime Apple does so. Consider that HN is all about intellectual curiosity. Imagine that the hostname is intellectualcuriosity.ycombinator.com rather than news. Debating product design is more likely to yield interesting thoughts/comments and much…

There are two sides to intellectual curiosity at HN: the article itself, and the opinions of the HN commentariat. In this case, I agree that the news itself isn't particularly intellectually gratifying, but this is seismically important news with many potential non-obvious ramifications, and I would be quite interesting in seeing those HN opinions that aren't just "lol die pumpkin".

For comparison, the HN story announcing that Trump was chosen as president-elect had 1800 upvotes and 2200 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12907201

Re: Ask HN: How is Trump testing positive for Coronavirus not on the frontpage?

#28

Post by addicted »

troydavis wrote: post #11
plessthanpt05 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump saying him and Melania testing positive for the Coronavirus four weeks out from the presidential election is huge news. This story is not about politics (i.e. about a political issue), it is about a political/world leader and his wife. Edit: So "TV news" covering the newest iPhone release would probably be off-topic too then based on this reasoning, but this seems to reliably hit the front page of HN everytime…

> Edit: So "TV news" covering the newest iPhone release would probably be off-topic too then based on this reasoning, but this seems to reliably hit the front page of HN everytime Apple does so. Consider that HN is all about intellectual curiosity. Imagine that the hostname is intellectualcuriosity.ycombinator.com rather than news. Debating product design is more likely to yield interesting thoughts/comments and much…

HN’s got to be a pretty intellectually barren place if it cannot find anything to drive intellectual curiosity in what is a pretty unprecedented event.

When was the last time a sitting US President contracted a deadly disease with no know cure?

And happened to be within spitting (and therefore contagion) distance of the other Presidential candidate who, if he contracted the disease was also at great risk?

And it’s likely the VP is also at risk.

You have a situation where the President and the VP may be incapacitated. You may have a situation where the presidential candidates for both the major parties may have to drop out of the elections.

And that’s just my immediate thoughts about unprecedented possibilities.

Re: Ask HN: How is Trump testing positive for Coronavirus not on the frontpage?

#30

Post by justinzollars »

kart23 wrote: post #23
justinzollars wrote: post #9

Does anyone see the bot attack on Trumps Twitter account? That is interesting. They are posting Satanist images with captions in the Aramaic language. If you work at Twitter you might want to get to work and stop this state sanctioned attack on his account.

Did you get a screenshot? This sounds really weird and I'm curious.

no, and it looks like its all gone. But there were thousands of them an hour ago.
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