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Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

drewdevault.com

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Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#341

Post by demonshalo »

HN does a ton of censorship. Ex.

Communism is responsible for 100s of millions of deaths world wide, it is way more vicious and evil than say Nazism or any other ism. Yet somehow if I post a communist opinion here (on a political topic) or actively say that I am a communists while bashing capitalism, that goes under the title of free speech and moderators do nothing about that (as far as I can see). Now, imagine if I came out in that same political discussion saying that I am a Nazi. That would get flagged and removed right away even though that's a much less evil position to hold.

It is clear to me that HN moderation is biased. I am for 100% total and free speech. The worst and the best of humanity should be able to say their piece. But in my mind there is no denying the fact that HN moderators are biased. Merely mentioning the evils of communism is sufficient at times to get your comments removed and give you warnings -.-

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#342

Post by losteverything »

ansible wrote: post #314
losteverything wrote: post #179

I never gave thought to the moderator position till this analysis. I wonder if it is a full time job. Do other sites have full time moderators? Moderators are needed, of course and im glad i am not one. But i can only imagine how much of a burn out job with little satisfaction it must be. Like data entry jobs in the past. To compare and contrast, if you are a construction worker making residential housing, you and se…

Moderators are needed, of course and im glad i am not one. But i can only imagine how much of a burn out job with little satisfaction it must be. Like data entry jobs in the past. I'm one of the moderators over on reddit.com/r/AskEngineers. It is work... that I don't get paid for. Or any kind of reward, really. But I'm doing it because I want to promote high-quality discussion on various engineering topics. I'm glad…

Do you manage time so that there is planned downtime? Like no moderating weekends or 8/40/5? Or is it a mostly 24/7 look-at-all-new-posts thing

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#343

Post by gnicholas »

dang wrote: post #291
gnicholas wrote: post #276

I was actually going to build a tool that scrapes HN every couple minutes and looks for stories that were hot (on the front page) and then drops by 20+ slots. I've happened to be involved in a couple threads where this inexplicably happened, and I was unhappy to see the discussion being muted (people previously involved continued commenting, but no new people saw/joined the thread). I was going to show the buried pos…

Why don't you just look at https://news.ycombinator.com/active ? (via https://news.ycombinator.com/lists ). Most if not almost all of those stories show up there. Btw since you brought up the point, we moderate stories less, not more, when they're about YC or YC-funded companies. That's literally the first rule of HN moderation: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=... That doesn't mean we don'…

Checking /active makes sense, but once the rank for a story plummets, there's essentially a cap on comment activity. New people don't get brought in, and over time the existing commenters dwindle. So I'm not sure that would quite accomplish what I'm looking for.

Regarding YC companies, I totally understand and trust that you and other moderators are not killing negative stories on YC companies. But I've noticed that sometimes these stories just disappear, and I don't know if this has anything to do with the fact that YC founders likely have high karma and are likely friends with other users with high karma. This is why I used the word "inadvertently" in my description of this — I truly think it may just be an artifact of how the algorithms interact and the fact that YC founders may end up having more clout than the average commenter. Basically, I don't know what powers are unlocked at different levels (I know new users can't downvote comments, for example), and I wonder if high-karma users have powers that I (~2700) do not have. And even if they don't have explicit powers, does their downvoting or flagging have a much bigger impact on whether comments or stories are killed?

Thanks for weighing in. You and the other folks who handle hn@ emails have always been prompt when I emailed with questions.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#344

Post by enraged_camel »

dang wrote: post #252
enraged_camel wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's another example of women being sidelined. Most HN readers are male, and selfishly flag/downvote articles/comments about sexism because they want to read about the latest JavaScript framework instead.

That's not a helpful ingredient to pour into the well. You're basically just repeating a mental mock-up you have, not backed by data, only snark. Anyone who looks sincerely and closely will see how much more complex the situation is. Moreover, there's evidence that repeating such generalizations—even though you intend them critically—makes the environment less welcoming and poisons it further for the equality you'd p…

>>Anyone who looks sincerely and closely will see how much more complex the situation is.

The situation is definitely complex, which is why it must be discussed at every opportunity and in every venue, especially by intelligent people who deal with complexity as a living (HN's core demographic). Downvoting and flagging stuff just because you personally don't want to talk about it is selfish. It is in fact the very definition of selfishness.

If someone does not want to discuss a particular topic, they can refrain from upvoting it and posting comments on its discussion thread. FLAGGING however prevents others from being exposed to it as well because it pushes the submission off the front page (where it rightfully belongs, based on votes) and sometimes even kills it if enough selfish people pile on. That only makes the issue worse because it is akin to mopping it under the carpet.

You may feel that discussions on certain topics don't add anything original. Did it ever occur to you that that's simply your perspective, shared perhaps only (or mostly) by other old-timers? Many people, especially those new to the industry, are unaware of these issues and they should be exposed to them within the relatively civil and intelligent medium of HN.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#345

Post by [deleted] »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #269
bradleyjg wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The users are deciding. We are flagging these stories because we don't see the value in endless flamewars over the same subject. If you can't get enough of debates about sexism in SV there are lots of other places on the internet for that.

I agree. I don't generally touch stories about new and important events on that topic, but when it's just a random gender-related submission that's bound to induce a flamewar in comments, I just flag it.

[deleted]

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#346

Post by forapurpose »

anigbrowl wrote: post #278
dang wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a helpful ingredient to pour into the well. You're basically just repeating a mental mock-up you have, not backed by data, only snark. Anyone who looks sincerely and closely will see how much more complex the situation is. Moreover, there's evidence that repeating such generalizations—even though you intend them critically—makes the environment less welcoming and poisons it further for the equality you'd p…

How many women do you have on the mod team, for perspective? I have my doubts about how welcoming HN is for different demographics, and while the grandparent poster is handwaving things with a mental mockup as you say, absent transparency on moderation policies many people inevitably feel the same way about the moderation. I mean, at present you have a bunch of secret rules to make everything run better. That works O…

> How many women do you have on the mod team, for perspective?

This makes an excellent point, and the same could be said of the junior moderation team - the HN readers who up/downvote comments.

A practical solution: The mods might ask people in underrepresented minorities for some honest, frank perceptive and feedback. Stop guessing and trying, and get some real knowledge. Look at particular threads (on sexism, etc.) and talk about how welcoming HN is to them and why. IME, there is no substitute for a lifetime of personal experience with these issues; most people without that experience - including myself - are surprised when they hear the realities and details.

You can identify who is underrepresented and who might feel unwelcome by what groups are referred to as "they". For example, in discussions of sexism women are often discussed in the third person - a good sign of who is the excluded group. If you think about it, those discussions should be led by the people who have experience with the issue, just like Java devs (hopefully) lead the Java discussion. This discussion, right here and right now, should have those voices - it's right in front of our eyes.

I'll add that religious prejudice against Muslims is particularly overlooked. If I were Muslim, I would not feel welcome here at all. As a practical test, substitute in 'Jews/Jewish/Judiasm' for 'Muslims/Islamic/Islam' (to pick a religious minority against which prejudice is rejected, as it should be for all) and evaluate the statement. I've seen many that unambiguously fail.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#347

Post by yahna »

arkades wrote: post #43
spash wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 governmen…

It's still censorship either way.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#348

Post by yahna »

tptacek wrote: post #220
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's entirely valid for me to present my case and submit it for the consideration of the community and the moderators. I don't understand what you're getting at here, you're not making a very compelling argument for anything in particular.

I think my point is pretty clear. In arguing that CNN's decision not to air your opinions in prime time is legitimate while HN's decision to be selective about what they'll provide a venue for isn't, you've accepted unquestioningly CNN's constraints while dismissing HN's. In both cases, you're applying an enormous amount of subjectivity. But you'd prefer not to acknowledge that, and so have instead attempted to refra…

You're argument seems like a strawman. I don't think anyone has argued that HN should operate with no moderation whatsoever.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#349

Post by krapp »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #260
tptacek wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'm just saying that I'm not sure you can conclude they don't have a real database backend now from the news.arc code.

Ah, yeah. (It's odd that Arc went closed-source but kept improving. It's maybe one of the most important custom languages in the industry, relative to HN's impact on the world.)

Did Arc go closed-source or does Hacker News run a closed-source fork?

As far as I can tell, the arc forums site is still up and running, and a lot of people seem to be focused on Anarki[0].

[0]https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#350

Post by yahna »

tptacek wrote: post #323
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand why it's so hard to understand why there's a difference between the mediums. I've made it pretty clear.

I think it's clear to everyone how the mediums are different. What's not clear is how subjective decisions CNN makes about what to air are acceptable, but subjective decisions HN makes about what to allow on the front page aren't. What's especially weird about this argument is that the US media market is in fact in the middle of a giant debate about how acceptable CNN and Fox News's editorial decisions are. It's not…

They have literally had laws enforcing fairness in media.

Fox news is heavily criticized for their biased reporting and editorial standards. That would be the comparison to criticism of HN modding policies.

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