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

Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 46 posts

Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?

#21

Post by dang »

ColinWright wrote: post #11
aminozuur wrote: post #3

Not sure about getting cancelled. But I recently submitted a link containing an uncomfortable truth from Pew Research titled "U.S. has world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households". It got 30 upvotes in one hour, and quickly reached the front page. It seemed to have gotten shadowbanned by a moderator, as it disappeared to the 5th page despite its quickly gained popularity. It was not flagged, o…

I suspect it triggered the flame war detector. Search for that and you'll find more information. It can be flagged without showing "[flagged]". That tag only gets shown when something is flagged to death. Your item wasn't flagged to death because it's still active. I suspect it's mostly that a sizeable proportion of people on the site decided that it doesn't really fit with the theme and they don't want to see things…

Yes, it triggered the flamewar detector.

Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?

#22

Post by dang »

mmaunder wrote: post #14
aminozuur wrote: post #3

Not sure about getting cancelled. But I recently submitted a link containing an uncomfortable truth from Pew Research titled "U.S. has world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households". It got 30 upvotes in one hour, and quickly reached the front page. It seemed to have gotten shadowbanned by a moderator, as it disappeared to the 5th page despite its quickly gained popularity. It was not flagged, o…

Yeah I think the older HN was way more organic. These days it seems more curated, but perhaps that's OK since older HN was way less popular with the mainstream internet than today - making it attractive for gaming the algo and vulnerable to behaviors you see on sites like reddit. I'd guess it's also a challenge to keep the site on-topic versus veering off into becoming a political or populist site.

The amount of curation hasn't changed that much since I've been around, and pg used to do a lot as well. HN has always been a curated/moderated/whatever-term-you-prefer site.

Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?

#23

Post by tinus_hn »

bigiain wrote: post #4

Yes targeted downvoting for not following groupthink happens. Just like everywhere else on the internet that lets anonymous users vote. But no, having your tally of meaningless internet points decrease isn’t really getting “cancelled”. If downvotes here make you sad, stop looking at them or go do something fun instead. You aren’t going to be uninvited to speak at conferences or lose you job because your HN score goes…

I don’t care about this score whatsoever but what can sometimes happen is that you post something controversial which get downvoted to -4 and then other, completely unrelated comments start getting downvotes as well. It seems as if people are looking through your profile for your comments and go and downvote some more. It comes across a bit weird.

Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?

#24

Post by ratsmack »

dang wrote: post #21
ColinWright wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it triggered the flame war detector. Search for that and you'll find more information. It can be flagged without showing "[flagged]". That tag only gets shown when something is flagged to death. Your item wasn't flagged to death because it's still active. I suspect it's mostly that a sizeable proportion of people on the site decided that it doesn't really fit with the theme and they don't want to see things…

Yes, it triggered the flamewar detector.

There's nothing wrong with energetic conversation as long as it remains civil, but I have to guess that your experience is that the incivility comes quicker in these cases though.

Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?

#25

Post by ratsmack »

dang wrote: post #7
ratsmack wrote: post #2

Let's just say there is a specific slant to the politics here and far too many people would rather down vote than refute an argument.

How people view the "slant to the politics here" is determined by (1) their own political slant, and (2) how intensely they hold it. This is one of the most reliable phenomena on HN; there are countless cases going both ways. Recent post about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25922311 Proposed explanation of why this mechanism is so reliable: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... R…

Good (added) examples. Most of those verge on personal attacks and definitely don't add anything to the conversation.

Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?

#26

Post by krapp »

tinus_hn wrote: post #23
bigiain wrote: post #4

Yes targeted downvoting for not following groupthink happens. Just like everywhere else on the internet that lets anonymous users vote. But no, having your tally of meaningless internet points decrease isn’t really getting “cancelled”. If downvotes here make you sad, stop looking at them or go do something fun instead. You aren’t going to be uninvited to speak at conferences or lose you job because your HN score goes…

I don’t care about this score whatsoever but what can sometimes happen is that you post something controversial which get downvoted to -4 and then other, completely unrelated comments start getting downvotes as well. It seems as if people are looking through your profile for your comments and go and downvote some more. It comes across a bit weird.

> It seems as if people are looking through your profile for your comments and go and downvote some more. It comes across a bit weird.

People will do that. It's happened to me a couple of times. Nothing you can do about it, though, and you're not allowed to complain about it. Just take your lumps in silence.

Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?

#27

Post by ratsmack »

systemvoltage wrote: post #8

My advise to anyone here is to not dismiss downvoted comments but independently read them and form your own opinion. If it sides with the majority, great. No harm. But if it doesn't, then you can add your voice by upvoting them and expanding on their comment with your own color. I actually gravitate towards downvoted comments to see if there is some treasure, usually not but sometimes you do find interesting but awkw…

Everyone should browse with the "showdead" set to yes. I also would like to be able to comment on the dead posts, but I guess I'll just have to be happy with viewing them.

Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?

#28

Post by gitgud »

Getting Cancelled doesn't seem to be a thing, from what I can tell. The reason being is that it's hard to remember usernames without photos and being able to follow people etc. The user is much less memorable than the content (which is good).

What I've noticed in the few years I've been here is that you will be downvoted for a useless comment. Whether that comment is hurtful, comedic, arrogant... if it doesn't add to the discussion, then it's kind of a useless comment and will be downvoted.

The thing with HN though is that it is rigorously moderated by users and admins to a fairly strict set of guidelines. This means that if you're posting something that doesn't align with the goals of the community, then it probably won't be liked and feel like you were shadow-banned.

Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?

#30

Post by Jtsummers »

ratsmack wrote: post #27
systemvoltage wrote: post #8

My advise to anyone here is to not dismiss downvoted comments but independently read them and form your own opinion. If it sides with the majority, great. No harm. But if it doesn't, then you can add your voice by upvoting them and expanding on their comment with your own color. I actually gravitate towards downvoted comments to see if there is some treasure, usually not but sometimes you do find interesting but awkw…

Everyone should browse with the "showdead" set to yes. I also would like to be able to comment on the dead posts, but I guess I'll just have to be happy with viewing them.

If you vouch for it, you may be able to bring it back to life and then comment on it. I do this for dead comments that don't seem (to me) to be reasonably dead. Often it's someone who's been shadow banned for some reason (often a good one if you go through their comment history), but I'm willing to bring back their good comments when I find them.
Post reply on HN