Yep!
Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?
31–40 of 46 posts
Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?
#32Hellbanned IP and hidden users are a thing.
Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?
#33Yes 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…
>having your tally of meaningless internet points decrease When you're flagged dead, you effectively disappear. This is wrong in my opinion.
Yeah, that sucks, but getting flagged enough to be shadowbanned seems to take a fair bit more work/arguing than a few retaliatory downvotes. Surely anybody getting close to that knows they’re doing so?
And you can always come back as bigiain2 or ratsmack2 later...
Assuming that HN/YCombinator “owes” you any points reputation is a pretty silly point of view.
I guess there probably are some cases where YC (or other) backed startups might judge people based on HN meaningless internet points, but if you care about that, perhaps your choices to argue vehemently enough against the groupthink here are nit great choices for you? You probably aren’t waging a vegan or anti surveillance capitalism war of words on your LinkedIn in that case, you might want to keep personal crusades out of your professional persona here if you are playing a profession persona here?
Or own the personal crusades, because if Facebook or Google refuse to hire me based on my privacy stance in my HN post history, or Palantir refuse to hire me based on my distrust of law enforcement? I’m totally OK with that. I will back out of arguments with Googlers or Facebookers well before things get to punitive downvoting stage though, just for my own sanity...
Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think the reasons for not being allowed to complain are pretty fair though, it’s not going to make any positive difference (and you’ll more likely end up Streisand Effecting yourself), and it’s uninteresting for everybody else.
I see it as not so much “take your lumps”, but more like “Meh, haters gonna hate - just ignore them.” Not a perfect solution, sure, but if you wanna participate on a anonymous/pseudonymous forum, that’s kinda inevitable. What’s the alternative?
Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
And thanks for your collective work.
While criticisms of this place are common, and often deserved - it’s still one of the largest and most civil places where discussions that interest me take place.
Stopping public discourse from descending into shit flinging cesspits is a tough job, and overall I think what happens here is amazing.
Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?
#36My 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.
I’d stop short of saying “everyone should” do that, but I do, and I’ll upvote or vouch for posts that seem to me to be unfairly judged.
Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?
#37Hellbanned IP and hidden users are a thing.
Sure. But clearly some of those are deserved. I don’t have a feel for how often that’s done incorrectly, but I’d guess it’s very rare? Do you know of many cases where accounts are shadowbanned or hellbanned without quite obviously pushing way past polite consideration of the guidelines? The only times I’ve ever investigated dead users it’s been pretty obvious that they repeatedly and flagrantly refused to back down on expected polite behaviour...
Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've heard opposite complaints about what that slant is (I think entirely from people making their claims in good faith). And of course, both could be correct: there could be a particular mainstream and everyone whose views are outside of it in any direction might find a somewhat chilly reception. > far too many people would rather down vote than refute an argument Another challenge is that there's not always a conse…
I generally reserve down votes for personal attacks and comments that are excessively off topic.
That's fine, but it's not a norm here. HN explicitly allows downvoting disagreement; a downvote is less noisy and disruptive than the "I disagree with this" comments that we'd get if you couldn't.
Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It might not only be incivility but also lower SNR (people replying to each other with the same rehashed arguments) which makes the whole thread less interesting for everyone, including passive readers
Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?
#40My 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…
> not dismiss downvoted comments but independently read them and form your own opinion
You can say that about pretty much any speech, but in this age of unlimited information available to you, you need heuristics if you want to make the most of it. Dismissing dead comments is a good one on HN in my experience. I'm more concerned about false positives (comments I choose to read because I falsely thought they would be thought-provoking) than false negatives (the comments you mention).