There are no results for tank man • Hacker News Board

Re: There are no results for tank man

#41

Post by JPKab » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 6:03 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #20

rcoveson wrote: post #2

Original HN post flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925

Given the outsized effect of flags in comparison to upvotes, I’m of the opinion that Chinese national HN members, and some subset of “no politics evar” crowd is more than enough to flag these to just shy of being dead.

Legitimate criticism of the CCP results in rather intense flagging.

I'm no angel and I've definitely made comments that deserved flagging on HN and I really try hard to play by the rules that dang sets, but it's a rather clear pattern that certain subjects solicit pretty intense flagging despite not really being "nationalistic flame bait".

In case dang sees this I hope I'm not violating further rules of service I'm just simply trying to point something out, that is absolutely relevant to this discussion.

Re: There are no results for tank man

#42

Post by Andrew_nenakhov » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 6:05 PM UTC

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #8

Hmmm, DuckDuckGo image search shows some people standing next to tanks but not the tank man photo. I guess it makes sense since DDG uses bing for their search tech but it's pretty disappointing that you can get uncensored searches or privacy but not both.

For me, ddg shows the image in main search, but not in image search.

Re: There are no results for tank man

#43

Post by dTal » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 6:05 PM UTC

xenocratus wrote: post #14

rcoveson wrote: post #2

Original HN post flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925

Something else that I find curious is that this entry vanished from front page for a while, and now it's stuck at the bottom, even though it has twice the points in half the time compared with post number #5 (at the time of writing).

I don't think we need invoke any conspiracies for that; HN's algorithm is ever mysterious. Yesterday a submission of mine hit the front page in 3 seconds with no upvotes.

Re: There are no results for tank man

#44

Post by whoopdedo » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 6:05 PM UTC

MikeDelta wrote: post #29

Odd, if you search for tanks man, or tank men, or tank man picture, you get all sorts of nonsense (tanks man shows one actual image). But zero results for such generic words means it has to be blocked actively.

Or if you add any arbitrary word to the search, e.g. "tank man the"

Re: There are no results for tank man

#45

Post by kian » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 6:05 PM UTC

@dang, I think we need an explanation for why Tank Man-related content on Hacker News has been disappearing all day. I usually trust HN to be a bastion of free speech, and if there isn't some kind of proportionate response here, I don't believe myself or many others here will be able to see it that way going forward.

EDIT: Thank you for your response, dang. Hacker News is a special place, which is why we have responded so strongly to today's events - I apologize if the tone above came off as less-than-civil. I (and it seems, many others) look forward to hearing more about the 'dupe' article others have linked to below. It was only upon seeing the article marked as a dupe after seeing the previous flagged out of existence that it began to feel like more than just a user-initiated action, so I am sure further information on the mod-initiated actions will put these fears to rest.

Re: There are no results for tank man

#46

Post by jasode » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

I'm guessing it is a "hand tuned" search result tweak because just appending "china" returns a few images:

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=tank%20man%20china

(For those who don't see results, this is my screen grab of the above at 18:12 UTC : https://imgur.com/a/3tzPV49)

Also, "Tiananmen Square massacre" still returns some image results:

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Tiananmen+Square+massac...

Therefore, the tweak for "tank man" doesn't seem to make any sense since all the other phrases to get to the same sensitive topic are not suppressed.

Re: There are no results for tank man

#47

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

MikeDelta wrote: post #35

t-writescode wrote: post #13

There are no image results for Tank Man. Regular search results in pictures and articles.

Image results on anything else than tank man, like tanks man or tank man image, does result in various results (muscular men in tanks). But zero images on these two generic words means it has to be censored. I would at least expect odd pictures of muscular men in tanks like in the other searches

[deleted]

Re: There are no results for tank man

#48

Post by xenocratus » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

JPKab wrote: post #41

falcolas wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the outsized effect of flags in comparison to upvotes, I’m of the opinion that Chinese national HN members, and some subset of “no politics evar” crowd is more than enough to flag these to just shy of being dead.

Legitimate criticism of the CCP results in rather intense flagging. I'm no angel and I've definitely made comments that deserved flagging on HN and I really try hard to play by the rules that dang sets, but it's a rather clear pattern that certain subjects solicit pretty intense flagging despite not really being "nationalistic flame bait". In case dang sees this I hope I'm not violating further rules of service I'm j…

Even then, mods can override those flags, which in this case seems to not be happening. Especially given the [dupe] designation on another post

Re: There are no results for tank man

#49

Post by fighterpilot » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #46

I'm guessing it is a "hand tuned" search result tweak because just appending "china" returns a few images: https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=tank%20man%20china (For those who don't see results, this is my screen grab of the above at 18:12 UTC : https://imgur.com/a/3tzPV49 ) Also, "Tiananmen Square massacre" still returns some image results: https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Tiananmen+Square+massac... Therefore,…

The first one returns no images for me

Re: There are no results for tank man

#50

Post by dTal » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

kian wrote: post #45

@dang, I think we need an explanation for why Tank Man-related content on Hacker News has been disappearing all day. I usually trust HN to be a bastion of free speech, and if there isn't some kind of proportionate response here, I don't believe myself or many others here will be able to see it that way going forward. EDIT: Thank you for your response, dang. Hacker News is a special place, which is why we have respond…

"Political" or "controversial" content is always^H^H^H^H sometimes punished by HN (sorry, dang). While I think this is a highly questionable policy which is itself political in nature (reinforcing as it does the status quo), it need not be specific to China.

A statement would certainly be nice, however.