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Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#251

Post by paulnpace »

throwaway665544 wrote: post #174
dang wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first two you listed were downranked by the flamewar detector. The last one was downranked by users. Admins didn't touch any of them. Note for everybody: can you guys please include the HN /item link if you're mentioning specific threads? That would be much more efficient and that way I can answer many more of people's questions.

If you have nothing to hide, why not make all story and comment removal history publicly visible, like Wikipedia edits.

Wikipedia can and does vaporize edits.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#252

Post by mandmandam »

Symbiote wrote: post #201
mandmandam wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are stories on this list that deserved to be seen, were popular, were important, and were not in fact dumpster fires in the comments - but a particular crowd with a particular bias decided to flag them. Example 1: https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=39142094 Example 2: https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=39130652 Example 3: https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=39214844 Does this crowd think…

None of the is on-topic for HN. The initial invasion was allowed due to the international significance, but to discuss subsequent events head to Reddit. This is in the FAQ linked in the footer. Something novel with drones or new medicine or similar will be on topic.

The ICJ is the world's highest court, and genocide cases are very rare. Their verdict, without any question, has "international significance". It's by far the most significant development in months.

From the submission guidelines:

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting.

People here were clearly finding those stories interesting, as measured by upvotes and comments.

> If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

US mainstream TV mostly declined to air South Africa's side of the case, as well as the actual verdict; opting instead to only air Israel's defense.

> Something novel with drones or new medicine or similar will be on topic.

"Something with drones" = on topic, but a plausible genocide verdict from the ICJ is not of "international significance" and therefore off topic... This isn't computing for me, sorry.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#253

Post by caymanjim »

lars_francke wrote: post #10

> While I have no reason to doubt Daniel's good faith, it's hard to believe that HN users would be tired of LLM-related news. I am, so you can believe it. But: I don't flag things that I'm tired of.

I'm sick of LLM-related news. I'm fascinated by the technology and the progress, but for every one article about something novel, there are dozens rehashing the same points about social impact, bias, deepfakes, plagiarism, etc. These topics are of some interest to me, but the vast majority of the articles bring nothing new to the table and are reactionary responses to the latest infraction.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#254

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

next_xibalba wrote: post #29

Don’t the vast majority of these get removed via flags from users? Edit: I’m not asking a rhetorical question. There are a lot of comments in this thread thanking “the mods” and I didn’t realize there was a mod team cultivating the front page. Can anyone attest to this?

> There are a lot of comments in this thread thanking “the mods” and I didn’t realize there was a mod team cultivating the front page.

IMO this happens because fundamentally people have "The reddit mental model" about how moderation works here, as if moderation is some privileged, limited position. It's just wrong.

Yes, there is dang, the single admin who posts publicly, and I guess it's possible/probable there are other HN admins who assist him. But 99.9% of the time when I hear people complaining about "the mods" or "power tripping mods" or "censorship", it's basically that other users saw what you had to say, and we just don't want to see it here.

It's also weird that occasionally people think there is some sort of "rule" about what can be flagged. There are obviously guidelines, but as this power is held by any normal user, it's basically whatever they want it to mean. For example, I frequently flag stories where I think the topic and article is totally valid, but where every single time I've seen the topic debated on HN it becomes a useless flamewar or is filled with the lowest quality commentary. At least for me, flagging isn't a value judgment on the "worthiness" of an article, it's simply about stuff I don't want to see on HN.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#255

Post by password4321 »

I am more interested in the mechanics of how something like this works, especially over time.

All kinds of tools related to HN content generate front page interest even for days but then once that passes things that cost money or use unreliable free resources start to disappear at an ever more rapid pace.

When they don't, the UI can become unmanageable... I'm not sure how this content will be organized over time but updating the README won't be tenable for long!

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#257

Post by nathanyz »

kortilla wrote: post #231
nathanyz wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you keep user flags from being used as a way to squash articles on a particular topic before they have had the chance to be exposed to the wider HN community? Meaning if someone were to theoretically get a real time feed of HN submissions, and flagged articles that they didn't want seen as well as messaging a group of friends to do the same thing. Do you have protections for this type of behavior that would pr…

What you’re asking about is referred to as “voting ring detection” and it’s something social networks keep very secret.

Yes, I know they do some form of detection on this for up/down votes, but flagging is supposed to be for content that violates rules, so I am curious if they handle it similarly. It doesn't really help you boost content, but can sure be used to suppress content if not tracked as flagging seems to significantly reduce visibility of a post.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#258

Post by tptacek »

alwa wrote: post #238
verticalscaler wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why must they be dreadful? Genuine question, I am not being obtuse. We should be able as a community to discuss conterversial subjects somehow. I also think this sort of thing invites flag brigades. Or better yet, a small batch of bad actor can easily start brigading and forcefully associate such flamewar expectations with any subject they don't like to drive it off HN. Maybe worth reconsidering how you flag? You…

Whether or not we’re able to discuss controversial subjects, a topic’s controversy doesn’t imply importance or relevance. It seems to me that the quality of any public discussion tends to increase when it’s relevant to the expertise in the room, and decrease when it involves people’s casual reads of complicated stuff about which they have vague but emotionally-charged impressions. HN folks have great, nuanced discuss…

The dinner party analogy is perfect.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#259

Post by mandmandam »

fragmede wrote: post #193
mandmandam wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are stories on this list that deserved to be seen, were popular, were important, and were not in fact dumpster fires in the comments - but a particular crowd with a particular bias decided to flag them. Example 1: https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=39142094 Example 2: https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=39130652 Example 3: https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=39214844 Does this crowd think…

There's a certain element that doesn't want to discuss politics at all, so I imagine these ran afoul of that crowd. This is a tech-oriented site, and we're not going to come up with a Middle East peace plan in the comments.

> This is a tech-oriented site

Exactly. Big tech has been staggeringly complicit in these oh-so documented war crimes. For example, AI is being used to 'target' people, even in refugee camps and residential areas; even when hundreds of civilian casualties are predicted. This has been admitted - even boasted about.

As tech people, we can't just stick our heads in the sand and expect this not to come back on us. We're enabling this destruction in myriad ways, from funding to coercion to suppression of discussion [cough].

Genocide isn't just politics. We are legally bound as a nation, and morally obligated as humans, to prevent it. Instead, the US and many its tech companies are complicit.

If we can't even discuss the ICJ ruling that this may well be in fact a genocide, even when people are behaving and upvoting without breaking guidelines, then imo something very important has been broken.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#260

Post by maxbond »

kortilla wrote: post #231
nathanyz wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you keep user flags from being used as a way to squash articles on a particular topic before they have had the chance to be exposed to the wider HN community? Meaning if someone were to theoretically get a real time feed of HN submissions, and flagged articles that they didn't want seen as well as messaging a group of friends to do the same thing. Do you have protections for this type of behavior that would pr…

What you’re asking about is referred to as “voting ring detection” and it’s something social networks keep very secret.

I don't have any proprietary knowledge of how HN does voting ring detection, but to offer an intuition about how it might work in the scenario proposed by GP, this voting ring would be detectable because their flags are highly correlated and clustered together in time. The more stories they attempt to flag down (successfully or otherwise), the more obvious the pattern will be.

I'm sure you're already thinking of ways to bypass that, and yes what you're thinking will probably work, it's a game of cat and mouse and no one technique will be sufficient or work forever. (See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_in_depth_(computing) )

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