[deleted]
Analyzing HN moderation and censorship
41–50 of 409 posts
Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Purpose of HN is ultimately agitprop for YC. It makes sense that curation of posts occurs--this only confuses people that buy too much into the "hacker" ethos.
This is silly.
Is it though.
Because it seems like we have zero evidence either which way, and your account is seemingly always on the status quo side.
Myself, I see fuck all discussion on here any more that reminds me of old HN.
Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship
#43"Censorship by moderators" How about: "Curation by moderators"
"Censorship by Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China" How about: "Curation by Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China"
There’s a difference between a state actor controlling the whole of the public arena and a private individual controlling their own privately-sponsored forum; the latter allows you to crack open a blog and flog whatever opinion you want, and the former does not. I admit there’s some gray area for something like google, which by virtue of its size and role as intermediary has censorship abilities approaching governmental levels.
Freedom of Speech is a restriction on the government, not a duty on the part of private individuals to let you come in and piss on their living room carpet.
Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship
#44Another HN tool moderators use that isn't mentioned in the post is the second-chance pool, where moderators will rescue a post which did not receive many upvotes and give it placement on the front page for a bit of time.
Where is this documented? Not trying to be snippy - I have no idea what powers the moderators have in this realm. Maybe HN could benefit from some lobste.rs-esque moderation transparency.
Even though HN is a community, the front page is essentially the mods' personal judgment. They are the editors, and HN is a newspaper.
I like it this way. They have excellent taste. The community has repeatedly proven it cannot be trusted to upvote intellectually gratifying content. pg's original HN code contained a flag for "rally", meaning the story is a rallying cry, and is therefore penalized because it's so easy to mindlessly upvote it.
The results speak for themselves: HN is now almost a top-1000 site by traffic.
They had to be phenomenal. I don't think many people appreciate just how difficult this was to pull off, or how much they work their asses off every single day. If they ignored HN for even a week, it would deteriorate noticeably.
Yet technology is at least as important. The fact that our upvotes do matter makes the situation unique -- although the mods can determine the relative weights of stories, we can still push a story upwards if enough of us are interested, and the story fits the site's original goal of gratifying intellectual curiosity.
There is no company anywhere in the world like this. At this point, HN practically defines our culture. When news stories say things like "so-and-so story about has been making the rounds on social media," at least some of them are talking about HN now. And your coworkers probably hear about the tech they use at least partly from HN.
The sole reason they're in this position is because they deserve to be. I hope they stay selective. As to being secretive, we should let them choose. If they want to reveal, fine. If not, fine. They've earned it. Even still, they've been remarkably transparent.
Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship
#45Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship
#46Article doesn’t mention what I believe is one mod tool: shadow banning accounts based on IP. I had a bunch of accounts get shadowbanned for no evident reason and after a while I deduced it was based on using the account from a particular cafe’s WiFi. I just created this account and if I go use it from that place I will be banned again by some automated process.
Why did you have so many accounts in the first place? How many is "a bunch"?
Is it against the rules? I can think of lots of legitimate (and obviously nefarious) reasons someone would.
Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship
#47In my opinion, far more than moderation, HN is effected by who votes for the new articles. If you look at the "new" page then most stories never even get one upvote. Those who do go over there and upvote stories have far more power than those who only ever look at the front page. Sadly, it seems that there are too many stories on "new" for a person to sit there, read each one, and upvote, so the only real way to get a story on the front page is to get lucky or gang up with your friends.
Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where is this documented? Not trying to be snippy - I have no idea what powers the moderators have in this realm. Maybe HN could benefit from some lobste.rs-esque moderation transparency.
Even though HN is a community, the front page is essentially the mods' personal judgment. They are the editors, and HN is a newspaper. I like it this way. They have excellent taste. The community has repeatedly proven it cannot be trusted to upvote intellectually gratifying content. pg's original HN code contained a flag for "rally", meaning the story is a rallying cry, and is therefore penalized because it's so easy…
HN's cool but it's just one forum among a million others. The moderation is good though sometimes arbitrary. That's a lot easier for users to accept when they know why they are getting positively/negatively moderated, which is a good reason for more openness. But at the end of the day it's a forum, the moderators have the final say, that's the contract you agree to in using it.
Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship
#49Article doesn’t mention what I believe is one mod tool: shadow banning accounts based on IP. I had a bunch of accounts get shadowbanned for no evident reason and after a while I deduced it was based on using the account from a particular cafe’s WiFi. I just created this account and if I go use it from that place I will be banned again by some automated process.
Why did you have so many accounts in the first place? How many is "a bunch"?
Well only one at a time. Then as each gets banned I make another one. Note that they get banned if I just visit HN from the IP in question no posting required.
Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is silly.
How so? HN is run by YC, and HN is used to promote YC companies and attract talent and normalize YC-style startup culture. Please elaborate before being so dismissive--you know, like we used to do on old HN.
I wrote a longer comment, originally, but cut it back to the single sentence when I realized that by dignifying the argument I was only lending your tossed-off slur more credibility. HN is not moderated so as to be agitprop for YC. Nobody who's talked to Dan for more than a couple minutes, or watched this site discuss the SFBA tech industry, could believe that.
The difference between the site post-Dan and pre-Dan --- you know, the "old" HN vs. today --- is that you can repeatedly write unfounded accusations like that today and not have your account shadowbanned and all your comments rank-penalized, like they were when Paul Graham ran the site. We all accepted those arbitrary moderation decisions back then, when there was no pretense of fairness or equity in moderation. Now that we have it, we attack the people who spend their time assuring it by making preposterous comparisons to the "good old days".