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Ask HN: What's with flagging articles criticizing Musk?

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Re: Ask HN: What's with flagging articles criticizing Musk?

#51

Post by dredmorbius »

1. HN's readers perform most of the site moderation, directly through votes, flags, and vouches, and indirectly through discussions on posts. Somewhat counterintuitively, posts which gather a high number of comments may get penalised if comments exceed votes, by an automated "flamewar detector" heuristic. This (and flags) can be turned off by HN's mods if requested. Such requests (and other meta / moderation questions) are best directed by email to hn@ycombinator.com. See guidelines here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42922791>. More: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>.

2. There are a few additional automated adjustments, most notably site penalties and "Major Ongoing Topics" (MOCs) which attract a large number of submission may also have a penalty applied. Frequently dang will make mention of this, though you can email queries as well. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011>.

3. Where mods do get actively involved, it's generally to reverse or disable such automated actions, or user-applied flags. The automated systems work well most but not all of the time. (It's taken me some time, and a fair bit of analysis of HN, to reach this conclusion. The system's not perfect, but it's pretty good.)

4. On account of 1) above, there are topics which HN has difficulty discussing reasonably, and many of those are political. Generally, if a topic strongly divides a large fraction of readers, you'll find that posts and many comments tend to get flagged and/or downvoted (comments only). If you suspect this is abusive or is preventing cogent points from getting made, email mods.

Keep in mind too that there may be people who find any discussion of Musk on HN to be tedious and flag on that basis. Reading intent on flagging is at best a highly approximate pastime.

Re: Ask HN: What's with flagging articles criticizing Musk?

#52

Post by CRConrad »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #37
zfg wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politics is a major part of the tech industry now. It's what it has become. Building any kind of ethical framework for hardware and software engineering necessitates looking at the ugly side. If Hacker News is genuinely not up to that then it's falling short.

It may be falling short of what you think it should be. A bunch of the rest of us don't think that, though. You may feel strongly about what you think we should do, but you don't get to tell the rest of us what the site should be about. You don't get to tear up the community guidelines and write your own. Let HN be what it is. If that doesn't match what you want, go find somewhere else that does.

> It may be falling short of what you think it should be.

It may not be falling short of what you think it should be.

> A bunch of the rest of us don't think that, though.

And if a bunch of us do think that, what then?

> You may feel strongly about what you think we should do, but you don't get to tell the rest of us what the site should be about.

Sure, but neither does anyone else. Like, ehm, you.

> You don't get to tear up the community guidelines and write your own.

What if many of us think they might need a few changes? What if most of us do? I mean, you seem to be arguing on the assumption that nobody, or at least almost nobody, does. Do you have any statistics to back that up?

> Let HN be what it is.

(At the risk of sounding somewhat Clintonian:) So what "is" HN?

If you're going to say "What it's always been!", then... No. It already isn't. Becasuse nothing ever is "what it's always been". Eternal constants don't exist; everything changes all the time. (Guy I used to know back in Ephesus used to say that.) HN now is already something very different than what we got user IDs on back in 2013, and it ain't gonna stop changing. So where were you with your resistance to change for the last dozen years or so?

> If that doesn't match what you want, go find somewhere else that does.

"Just because the Democratic Party is actually advocating labour camps for capitalists and mandatory sex change operations for everybody now is no reason for you to demand it should change! Let it be what it is, and if that doesn't match what you want, go find somewhere else that does!"

"Just because the Republican Party is actually advocating concentration camps for immigrants and mandatory megachurch membership for everybody now is no reason for you to demand it should change! Let it be what it is, and if that doesn't match what you want, go find somewhere else that does!"

See how ridiculous that is? So no, that's not how any of this works.

Re: Ask HN: What's with flagging articles criticizing Musk?

#53

Post by CRConrad »

palmfacehn wrote: post #22
zfg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Cutting the size and scope of government programs and regulations has more in common with the founding principles of individualist liberalism than collectivist authoritarian ideologies like National Socialism. I would wager that, "Everyone who disagrees with me is a fascist" isn't something new to this site or online discussions generally. To the contrary it is a tired trope. It does not inform us or stimulate a new…

> "Appears to make gesture"

"Appears"??? It's on fucking videotape! Are you saying his arm was actually down by his side all the time, and it just "appears" as if he's raising it? (Perspective? Refraction? Water will find its level?)

And "gesture"??? Pray tell, what fucking "gesture" is that he "appears" to be making, and why are you resorting to "gesture" in stead of acknowledging what exactly it is we're talking about?

As someone said in a nearby sub-thread, ~[1]"many of his weird sycophants seem to be on HN"...

___

[1]: Quoted from memory, so probably not exact.

Re: Ask HN: What's with flagging articles criticizing Musk?

#54

Post by CRConrad »

zfg wrote: post #44
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how long you have been here doesn't have any bearing whatsoever on the quality of your contribution. Perhaps not. But a 22-day-old account saying, over and over, "this site should be something else" is... a bit tone-deaf? A bit presumptuous? You don't show up in our community and immediately tell us that the whole purpose of our community should be what you demand. ("You" meaning zfg, not jacquesm.)

> our community It's as much mine as it is yours.

[flagged]

Re: Ask HN: What's with flagging articles criticizing Musk?

#56

Post by CRConrad »

zfg wrote: post #55
CRConrad wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

But it does. Do you think a new citizen is a lesser citizen?

"Community" is not the same as "nation state". Maybe getting the two concepts confused is why you seem not to have quite grasped at least one of them.

Re: Ask HN: What's with flagging articles criticizing Musk?

#57

Post by zfg »

CRConrad wrote: post #56
zfg wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it does. Do you think a new citizen is a lesser citizen?

"Community" is not the same as "nation state". Maybe getting the two concepts confused is why you seem not to have quite grasped at least one of them.

Do you think a new citizen is a lesser citizen?

Re: Ask HN: What's with flagging articles criticizing Musk?

#58

Post by palmfacehn »

CRConrad wrote: post #53
palmfacehn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cutting the size and scope of government programs and regulations has more in common with the founding principles of individualist liberalism than collectivist authoritarian ideologies like National Socialism. I would wager that, "Everyone who disagrees with me is a fascist" isn't something new to this site or online discussions generally. To the contrary it is a tired trope. It does not inform us or stimulate a new…

> "Appears to make gesture" "Appears"??? It's on fucking videotape! Are you saying his arm was actually down by his side all the time, and it just "appears" as if he's raising it? (Perspective? Refraction? Water will find its level?) And "gesture"??? Pray tell, what fucking "gesture" is that he "appears" to be making, and why are you resorting to "gesture" in stead of acknowledging what exactly it is we're talking ab…

Yes, the Guardian article linked above used the phrase, "appears to". Apparently they were not comfortable being more explicit than that. You may find the article helps to understand the context of the discussion of the article.

They also went on to cite the ADL to define the gesture. However, the ADL was explicit in their interpretation:

>It seems that @elonmusk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute, but again, we appreciate that people are on edge.

>In this moment, all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt, and take a breath. This is a new beginning. Let’s hope for healing and work toward unity in the months and years ahead.

I dislike Elon for reasons beyond the scope of this discussion. Certainly not a "sycophant". There's a fair amount of reducto-ad-hiterlum going around HN right now. I hope more reasonable rhetoric can prevail.

Re: Ask HN: What's with flagging articles criticizing Musk?

#59

Post by zfg »

palmfacehn wrote: post #58
CRConrad wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Appears to make gesture" "Appears"??? It's on fucking videotape! Are you saying his arm was actually down by his side all the time, and it just "appears" as if he's raising it? (Perspective? Refraction? Water will find its level?) And "gesture"??? Pray tell, what fucking "gesture" is that he "appears" to be making, and why are you resorting to "gesture" in stead of acknowledging what exactly it is we're talking ab…

Yes, the Guardian article linked above used the phrase, "appears to". Apparently they were not comfortable being more explicit than that. You may find the article helps to understand the context of the discussion of the article. They also went on to cite the ADL to define the gesture. However, the ADL was explicit in their interpretation: >It seems that @elonmusk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not…

And then the ADL had to face up to the reality of who Musk is the next day: https://www.axios.com/2025/01/23/elon-musk-nazi-joke-adl

And Musk has form. He likes to dabble in antisemitism: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/16/elon-musk...

Trying to excuse his fascist salutes as anything less than fascist salutes is not useful. See things as they are.

Re: Ask HN: What's with flagging articles criticizing Musk?

#60

Post by bambax »

mikequinlan wrote: post #7

Hacker News Guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

> unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon

I guess the second coming of Nazism to an unprecedented scale and without any serious opposition anywhere is 1/ uninteresting and 2/ absolutely irrelevant to tech.

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