Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

sangaline.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 327 posts

Re: Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

#11

Post by iplaw »

I didn't understand why the guy's PayPal story was removed from the front page -- the one about PayPal seizing a $40k USD balance without warning, allegedly due to a 2% chargeback rate over several years of doing business and hundreds of thousands of dollars in successful transactions.

I thought that the point of HN was auto-moderation? Perhaps now that HN has seen great increases in popularity, the quality of content has to be more carefully controlled, lest the quality of posts on the HN front page slowly enter a death spiral towards that of reddit.

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” ― George Carlin

Re: Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

#12

Post by laurent123456 »

As much as I like HN, I'm not a big fan of the secrecy around moderator interventions - what gets censored, what posts get re-titled, etc.

I can understand they might want to keep the ranking algorithm and anti-spam techniques secret, but stuff that are manually censored by a moderator should be indicated as such, maybe by some automatic message like "This post was removed due to [reason]".

Some websites manage to fight spam while remaining reasonably transparent (eg. StackExchange, where pretty much everything is documented - flags, closing reasons, edits, etc.).

Re: Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

#13

Post by moomin »

It's very interesting to note the number one pulled story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13741276.

If you take a look at the comments, it's theorized there that the story got pulled not because of moderator action, but because people abused the flagging mechanism. Given the content, and given the principal person under discussion, this seems pretty likely to me.

Re: Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

#14

Post by acdha »

paulpauper wrote: post #3

Posting on a social news site is a privilege, not a right. I've had stuff removed from Reddit and a few from Hacker News that got flagged after going on the front page...I've had stories on Reddit that got many upvotes and still removed just as it was going viral because the mods didn't like it...it's just the way it goes. It def. can seem unfair at times. No question about it.

This is technically true but misses important social aspects: does the average HN reader know which stories were removed at all, and why? If a certain political viewpoint, criticism of popular companies, etc. is being moderated or flag-killed that'll come as a surprise to anyone who never saw it and would have been interested if they'd had the chance.

Re: Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

#15

Post by minimaxir »

Historically, the mods have not killed a post for discussing Hacker News meta, although on occasion they apply a penalty to meta submissions. (the original post only had 32 upvotes, which is enough to get swallowed)

Indeed, HN recently allowed a post that advocated gaming the system because it encouraged debate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13676362

A conspiracy theory, even backed by data, is not the best application of Occam's Razor.

Re: Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

#16

Post by alex_hitchins »

suby wrote: post #4
eli wrote: post #2

I find this sort of conspiratorial meta complaint boring and (IMHO) off topic. I didn't flag it, but I'd understand if others did.

It seems to me that it's healthy if we as a community are able to discuss issues with how the community is policed. Some may find it boring, but I'd argue that it's useful.

I agree. I thought the write-up was fair and reasonably level headed.

If something popular (and surely by definition of being on the front page it is) is suddenly removed, people are bound to be interested in the reason why? Was the source discredited? Was it just a copyright issue? A simple filter for spiked stories would be good, just with a note on the reason why.

Of course HN don't have to implement this, but it would be of benefit to the community.

Re: Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

#20

Post by jasode »

iplaw wrote: post #11

I didn't understand why the guy's PayPal story was removed from the front page -- the one about PayPal seizing a $40k USD balance without warning, allegedly due to a 2% chargeback rate over several years of doing business and hundreds of thousands of dollars in successful transactions. I thought that the point of HN was auto-moderation? Perhaps now that HN has seen great increases in popularity, the quality of conten…

I don't think the Paypal story was "removed". That story is now on page 2. Yesterday, it stayed on the front page all day. It's decay from the 1st page to the 2nd page a day later seems comparable to other stories with ~200 comments.

The author's meaning of "remove from the frontpage" means abruptly disappearing from the front page and you still don't see it in the subsequent 6 or more pages.

Post reply on HN