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Ask HN: Why the Double Standard?

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Ask HN: Why the Double Standard?

#1

Post by Ackshully »

Every day here I hear about abuses from FB, Twitter, China, etc censoring this and that. There was a minor furor over Reddit admins getting caught changing comments.

Yet here on HN dang can and does remove any comment that questions how things are run here, without trace. Stories about important topics under active discussion :disappear:.

And it might never change, because every comment and article challenging HN can be removed without trace.

I'm really only posting this hoping to hit a few pairs of eyeballs before it gets removed, because direct questions to dang have gotten nowhere.

Re: Ask HN: Why the Double Standard?

#2

Post by wmf »

Personally, I think HN should have even stronger moderation/curation and likewise for social media. But putting that aside...

HN has so few users, and HN's users are savvy enough to find alternatives, that a little "censorship" doesn't matter. HN isn't deciding elections.

I browse with showdead on so I can see what's getting killed and I largely agree with it. I don't see any important truths being silenced. In general, challenging the rules of a platform on that platform isn't going to work and tends to generate a lot of bikeshedding. If you want to criticize HN, I suggest that you do it outside of HN.

Re: Ask HN: Why the Double Standard?

#3

Post by salawat »

Moderation is unfortunately a fact of life given the abuse non-moderated forums are frequently exposed to. I don't regularly see questionable moderation practices perpetrated. The few times I have seen things done that registered as questionable to my estimation, a bit of persistence tends to get the message to take root and bear fruit with at least a few curious minds generally after an indication that intellectual curiosity is piqued and fruitful non-flamebait discussion may be a result.

I'd also use the search function to see if said thread still exists. I haven't seen much straight up disappear, but stuff can travel to the hundreds in ranking surprisingly quickly as the overall conversation on evolves.

Is there any more detail you'd like to offer on the specific instances of material you feel are being unfairly buried and any guidance you may have received as to why they may have been? Generally there is at least a guideline violation or two that can be worked around.

Also, as always, remember the audience and platform are not ever guaranteed to be receptive to what you feel is important. That's an occupational hazard of the of information transmission, and the challenge to be overcome to get your message out there.

Failing any satisfying resolution, just keep at it! They can't stop the Signal, and given enough time, enough other people will pick it up to make sure it bubbles up somewhere. Just maybe not today.

Anyway... No matter what direction things go in, we're all still watching.

Re: Ask HN: Why the Double Standard?

#4

Post by Ackshully »

wmf wrote: post #2

Personally, I think HN should have even stronger moderation/curation and likewise for social media. But putting that aside... HN has so few users, and HN's users are savvy enough to find alternatives, that a little "censorship" doesn't matter. HN isn't deciding elections. I browse with showdead on so I can see what's getting killed and I largely agree with it. I don't see any important truths being silenced. In gener…

Thank you for your perspective. I strongly disagree that important truths are not being silenced, because I saw :multiple: stories about Gina Haspel get removed while under heavy discussion on the front page. I don't have any idea what other important stuff got removed, because there is no way to know.

I would have thought that a community of so called tech hackers and entepreneurs could demand some form of logs to know that censorship :really: isn't a problem.

> If you want to criticize HN, I suggest that you do it outside of HN.

That's truly awful advice. Disallowing criticism is step 1 of bad shit happening. At a minimum it stifles any possible improvement. And it's :always: step 1 of fascism.

Re: Ask HN: Why the Double Standard?

#5

Post by Ackshully »

salawat wrote: post #3

Moderation is unfortunately a fact of life given the abuse non-moderated forums are frequently exposed to. I don't regularly see questionable moderation practices perpetrated. The few times I have seen things done that registered as questionable to my estimation, a bit of persistence tends to get the message to take root and bear fruit with at least a few curious minds generally after an indication that intellectual…

Thanks. As an example, as I mentioned above, stories about Gina Haspel were unceremoniously dumped directly from the front page while under active discussion, at least three times in a single day.

Any conversations here about mass surveillance, Snowden, Assange etc are chock full of misinformation and smears. Those comments are rarely removed, so I don't buy the 'that story doesn't fit in HN's remit' narrative.

My major gripe is more general though: How can we call ourselves a community of hackers and entrepreneurs if there is no space whatsoever for critiquing the forum itself?

There is currently absolutely no accountability here whatsoever. If this community were healthy I don't think it would be tolerated - instead people don't even see the problem.

Re: Ask HN: Why the Double Standard?

#6

Post by wmf »

Ackshully wrote: post #4
wmf wrote: post #2

Personally, I think HN should have even stronger moderation/curation and likewise for social media. But putting that aside... HN has so few users, and HN's users are savvy enough to find alternatives, that a little "censorship" doesn't matter. HN isn't deciding elections. I browse with showdead on so I can see what's getting killed and I largely agree with it. I don't see any important truths being silenced. In gener…

Thank you for your perspective. I strongly disagree that important truths are not being silenced, because I saw :multiple: stories about Gina Haspel get removed while under heavy discussion on the front page. I don't have any idea what other important stuff got removed, because there is no way to know. I would have thought that a community of so called tech hackers and entepreneurs could demand some form of logs to k…

Gina Haspel sounds like "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. ... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." I see some threads about her that are [flagged] but not deleted, so there is some level of accountability there. If your goal is to be the "paper of record" then you have to wade into every controversial topic; I appreciate the fact that HN is not trying to be that and by banning certain topics it allows us to focus our energy elsewhere.

Log-based accountability (on the blockchain!) is an interesting idea; unfortunately HN suffers from the same problem as some open source projects where it's a high-profile thing that some people get tons of value from yet it doesn't generate any money to spend on cool new features.

In principle I believe that internal criticism and governance are good things, but you absolutely have to separate it into a separate /meta/ section (which HN doesn't have and mods don't intend to ever add) so it doesn't overwhelm the rest of the site and even then it seems to always get flooded with crackpots and (more recently) culture warring.

I agree that threads about mass surveillance, Snowden, Assange etc are pretty low-quality but I think it's very difficult to discuss those topics in general. How do you discuss actual conspiracies without opening the door to misleading conspiracy theories? There's no one I would trust, including myself, to moderate or set rules for such a discussion.

Re: Ask HN: Why the Double Standard?

#7

Post by Ackshully »

wmf wrote: post #6
Ackshully wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your perspective. I strongly disagree that important truths are not being silenced, because I saw :multiple: stories about Gina Haspel get removed while under heavy discussion on the front page. I don't have any idea what other important stuff got removed, because there is no way to know. I would have thought that a community of so called tech hackers and entepreneurs could demand some form of logs to k…

Gina Haspel sounds like "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. ... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." I see some threads about her that are [flagged] but not deleted, so there is some level of accountability there. If your goal is to be the "paper of record" then you have to wade into every controversial topic; I…

Thank you - I think you've managed to point directly to the heart of the hypocrisy I am seeing.

America put the lady who ran a torture center and deleted evidence meant for Congress in charge of the mass surveillance revealed by Assange and Snowden.

If that's off topic, then Assange and Snowden ought have been too. As you say, who could we trust to moderate or set rules for discussions like that. At the moment, we are supposedly trusting dang, and I don't. And I can't say that here because it's "off-topic / meta"... Because dang said so.

The logic is circular.

And while solutions could exist (you mention blockchain logs), and HN is supposedly the community for those very people who would be able to create / understand those solutions (techy hacker entrepeneurs), talking about those solutions :here: is off topic. Is that not a glaring double standard?

Re: Ask HN: Why the Double Standard?

#8

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

Ackshully wrote: post #7
wmf wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gina Haspel sounds like "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. ... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." I see some threads about her that are [flagged] but not deleted, so there is some level of accountability there. If your goal is to be the "paper of record" then you have to wade into every controversial topic; I…

Thank you - I think you've managed to point directly to the heart of the hypocrisy I am seeing. America put the lady who ran a torture center and deleted evidence meant for Congress in charge of the mass surveillance revealed by Assange and Snowden. If that's off topic, then Assange and Snowden ought have been too. As you say, who could we trust to moderate or set rules for discussions like that. At the moment, we ar…

> "If that's off topic, then Assange and Snowden ought have been too."

Assange and Snowden have too many ardent fanboys for their stories to get flagged off the front page but Haspel (I actually had to look up the name to figure out why I was supposed to care about this individual.) doesn't. Mystery solved; case closed.

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