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Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

drewdevault.com

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Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#131

Post by tptacek »

mnglkhn2 wrote: post #125
tptacek wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no paid submissions to HN, nor is there an elaborate conspiracy between HN and "certain media orgs" to get paywalled links onto the front page. This is the sort of nonsense tangent crud that the mods would normally zap to the bottom of the thread as "off topic". But they probably won't here, because it concerns their own moderation, and they're generally loathe to intervene --- even to clean up the threads…

You seem quite sure! Are you part of the HN executive group?

You figured me out! I'm the Executive Vice Chairman In Charge Of User Acquisition Metrics. Ewige Blumenkraft!

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#132

Post by minimaxir »

yorwba wrote: post #111
mnglkhn2 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Paid submissions are already disclosed by the inability to vote or leave comments. They also tend to be by one of a few companies looking for developers.

Specifically, the job ads are a) only for YC companies and b) have a set placement decay rate.

Both of those aspects keep the ads in check.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#133

Post by minimaxir »

mnglkhn2 wrote: post #119
yorwba wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paid submissions are already disclosed by the inability to vote or leave comments. They also tend to be by one of a few companies looking for developers.

My comment is prompted by the realization that recently (for the past year or so) a lot of general interest NYTimes articles shoot straight up to HN front page. There are two explanations: either the HN crowd is turning into a general interest one or YC/HN has a deal with NYTimes to help the later increase their memberships. Based on how the (down)votes go, I would give it a fair chance to the HN crowd turning into a…

A better argument against is that the NYTimes consistently produces good journalism.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#134

Post by andrewguenther »

flavio81 wrote: post #78

In this thread, some people are complaining of moderators downvoting (lowering the rank) of some submissions over others; and at least one person says "let the readers decide". I think that if I wanted a forum/news site where "the readers decide" and ONLY the readers decide, i'd go to Reddit. No thanks, i prefer HN due to the behind-the-scenes 'curation' or choice of content, which so far usually gives very interesti…

I've found moderation on HN to be a bit heavy handed recently. Specifically when it comes to the issue of sexism in SV. No matter the opinion, posts on this seem to get removed shortly after reaching the front page.

Question for the mods: Why? It doesn't appear to be a bias towards either side. Is the perception just that people are tied of hearing about it? Why not let the users decide that?

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#135

Post by Sone7 »

krapp wrote: post #54
Sone7 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, good to know. Guess we don't need any kind of logging system for that, we'll just take it at face value - I'm sure there are absolutely no other reasons that mods would downweight posts, so that's just great. /s

If you don't trust the moderators' word, why would you trust their logs?

I wouldn't - see the recent spez shit over on Reddit.

Would be nice if we could have a discussion on it instead of just saying it's impossible though - is this a community of hackers or just apologists?

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#136

Post by krapp »

mnglkhn2 wrote: post #125
tptacek wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no paid submissions to HN, nor is there an elaborate conspiracy between HN and "certain media orgs" to get paywalled links onto the front page. This is the sort of nonsense tangent crud that the mods would normally zap to the bottom of the thread as "off topic". But they probably won't here, because it concerns their own moderation, and they're generally loathe to intervene --- even to clean up the threads…

You seem quite sure! Are you part of the HN executive group?

He's got six digits of karma. He's obviously a Big Deal.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#137

Post by peterwwillis »

spash wrote: post #95
peterwwillis wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the point. They just don't want to think censorship is an accepted part of their daily lives because censorship often implies oppression. But censorship is part and parcel of almost every forum. The social values of the people who own the forum, as well as incentives behind their operating it, determine what kind of censorship is applied. For example, on YouTube, hate speech [which I know isn't actually a…

"By helping users to understand the error of their ways and have a chance to redeem themselves" Could you elaborate a bit more on this part? I find your post quite insightful and well thought out as a whole (though my sarcasm detectors may be a bit off especially when it comes to the above sentence), but in any case, I'm not sure why you wrote "that's not the point" when everything you say seems to support exactly th…

I was trying to convey that they weren't disagreeing with you about it being censorship, they were disagreeing of whether it was wrong or not depending on context. My reply was probably a bit disjointed.

A moderator is supposed to be an arbitrator or mediator. Moderation becomes censorship when they start enforcing policies to get users to align with their values rather than simply bringing people to an accord. Users are allowed to think it's censorship once they lose their value or become a liability.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#138

Post by abandonliberty »

flavio81 wrote: post #78

In this thread, some people are complaining of moderators downvoting (lowering the rank) of some submissions over others; and at least one person says "let the readers decide". I think that if I wanted a forum/news site where "the readers decide" and ONLY the readers decide, i'd go to Reddit. No thanks, i prefer HN due to the behind-the-scenes 'curation' or choice of content, which so far usually gives very interesti…

Luckily the community largely self-moderates and comments are generally very high value. At the moment we don't appear to have a significant troll problem.

Reddit was like this almost 10 years ago. This is the bliss of obscurity. We should hold a wake for Reddit 2010.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=reddit,h... (though I doubt people coming to this site actually google it)

Supposedly if you find the right subreddits it gets better, but since I have HN I haven't bothered. Nothing lasts forever - I wonder how long before HN goes the way of slashdot and reddit.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#139

Post by tptacek »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #124
tptacek wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying you'll be as successful as HN. Lobste.rs, which is run carefully by thoughtful people using software which is probably better than HN's, is much less successful. But that's the point.

You said you'd be two generations of tech ahead of HN. I know it was tongue in cheek, and I'm not calling you out. I'm nerding out about how much functionality pg managed to pack into so few lines of code. And it all worked! No data loss, no massive security problem, and the last time HN was down for >24h was because pg manually edited the database and accidentally created a circular comment chain. One way to look at…

You can call me out any time you'd like. I think an actual database backend for this site is only a couple years old. Or do we actually have one yet? I know the API has one, but HN doesn't run the API. It's possible this thing is still relying on flat files.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#140

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

tptacek wrote: post #130
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument is touted around a lot to justify censorship by private parties. Don't be misled - it is censorship. The law doesn't protect this kind of speech, which means they are legally permitted to participate in censorship, but it is censorship all the same. Yours is a common and poor argument for justifying this behavior. There are plenty of things which are both legal and immoral . I would prefer to participat…

It is in the same sense censorship when CNN refuses to run one's Youtube show in prime time.

No, I would argue that it's different. CNN has a limited amount of time to fill and doesn't accept user submissions. HN has neither constraint, and gives users voting rights over some of the success of each post.
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