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

#521
post #519
post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mat I ask why? Why do users have that right?

Thank you for the question. I can think of two reasons: (1) You wouldn't want someone to secretly remove or demote your own commentary. But secretive content moderation is extremely common on today's major platforms. In order to be heard there, you would need to fight back against the practice, and you cannot effectively do that while keeping secrets yourself. (2) Undisclosed content moderation does not express any k…

Interesting.

Re: #2

How is it a free speech issue when someone kicks you off their property? It has nothing to do with speech so why would the first amendment be involved?

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

#522
post #521
post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the question. I can think of two reasons: (1) You wouldn't want someone to secretly remove or demote your own commentary. But secretive content moderation is extremely common on today's major platforms. In order to be heard there, you would need to fight back against the practice, and you cannot effectively do that while keeping secrets yourself. (2) Undisclosed content moderation does not express any k…

Interesting. Re: #2 How is it a free speech issue when someone kicks you off their property? It has nothing to do with speech so why would the first amendment be involved?

In the case of shadow banning, you haven't kicked them off your property. You're asking them to stay while you earn ad money from their attention.

See the linked tweet for a more lawyerly argument in defense of shadow banning. The question before the court may hinge upon whether or not shadow banning expresses a message.

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

#523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I really don’t, and most people probably don’t. My job has absolutely nothing to do with finance, luckily.

You should probably learn what an ETF is…it’s one of the most basic investment vehicles that will grow your savings reliably over the years, and most people put their 401ks (or equivalent) into them, so yes a ton of normal people know what it is. The SEC enforces regulation (or it’s supposed to at least) around securities passed by congress. The real question here is if you don’t even know a basic finance term like E…

I wasn’t talking down the financial aspect of your comment, I was saying that the language you use is so idiosyncratic with that community that, in being an outsider, I can’t tell if you’re making fun of it, or are a part of it. “…basic investment vehicles that will grow your savings reliably…” this is what I’m talking about.

Also I’m not American so it’s not reasonable to expect me to know what the SEC is, and I don’t have a 401k. We have an entirely different retirement system in my country.

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

#524
post #521
post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the question. I can think of two reasons: (1) You wouldn't want someone to secretly remove or demote your own commentary. But secretive content moderation is extremely common on today's major platforms. In order to be heard there, you would need to fight back against the practice, and you cannot effectively do that while keeping secrets yourself. (2) Undisclosed content moderation does not express any k…

Interesting. Re: #2 How is it a free speech issue when someone kicks you off their property? It has nothing to do with speech so why would the first amendment be involved?

And to add to that, USA's 1st Amendment applies only to actions by the government. But this does mean that in other situations that redress is never available. It just may require more nuance or collective action, or conversely, even the willingness to let something go.

(I am not commenting in this message on whether an HN issue may exist or should be let go. On those matters, I am still reading.)

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

#525
post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not redirect to the original story?

We do redirect to earlier posts that had the exact same URL. But most dupes, in the sense of repeated posts about the same story, don't have the exact same URL. What do you do then? That's a hard problem. It would be great to have an automated solution to that but I don't know of one.

sorry for replying late, thanks for the reply - [0]

... that is a hard question, something akin to topic amalgamation or cosine similarity on the bulletpoints?

could one (semi)automatically ask the community to confirm if story foo and story bar are both sufficiently simultaneous about baz?

.... is there any dataset one might be able to play around with on this topic?

[0] there's like 3 good mods left online and you are one of them, so thanks for that.

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

#526
post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do redirect to earlier posts that had the exact same URL. But most dupes, in the sense of repeated posts about the same story, don't have the exact same URL. What do you do then? That's a hard problem. It would be great to have an automated solution to that but I don't know of one.

sorry for replying late, thanks for the reply - [0] ... that is a hard question, something akin to topic amalgamation or cosine similarity on the bulletpoints? could one (semi)automatically ask the community to confirm if story foo and story bar are both sufficiently simultaneous about baz? .... is there any dataset one might be able to play around with on this topic? [0] there's like 3 good mods left online and you…

> something akin to topic amalgamation or cosine similarity

Yup. We played with that years ago and dropped it as much too big of a potato. Another HN user spent a lot of time working on it and eventually gave up too. Someone should have a go using the newer AI tools though.

> could one (semi)automatically ask the community to confirm if story foo and story bar are

Also yup - building support for the community to take care of this is how we plan to do it, whenever we get to working on it. I think this could work well because people care about this problem.

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

#527

Essentially because users are tired of some topic that threatens them (LLMs or AI) we censor it. I think this is the beginning of HN becoming irrelevant in its old age. It starts to ignore realities it doesn’t like.

> It starts to ignore realities it doesn’t like.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_pot_calling_the_kettle_bla...

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

#528
post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Envision an airline withholding safety records, a car manufacturer keeping crash test results private, a restaurant refusing to provide health inspection logs, or a government refusing to disclose details of its budget allocation — all claiming that transparency would only complicate matters and provide "more data for distrust". In each case, the flawed nature of your core argument becomes obviously evident. I fully…

That's interesting! But I don't think the "flawed nature of my core argument" is obviously evident—and I don't think the community would consider that obvious either. It could be fun to look into it together, but the fun stops at "I fully expect your mindset and behavior to never change". Why dance if someone wants to kick you in the shins?

I hear you, but relying solely on the community's perception, particularly when it's predominantly of a certain mindset, doesn't guarantee objectivity. After all, recent years have seen an accelerating trend where leftist-controlled media and social-media companies have normalized the suppression of opposing viewpoints under the guise of 'fairness'.

It's one thing for private communities to set their own rules, but it's quite another to publicly tout these restrictions as universally fair when they're essentially projections of biased viewpoints coming from human-beings in positions of power. Actual transparency permits genuine openness and dialogue, rather than masking personal ideologies as righteous principles.

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

#529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Envision an airline withholding safety records, a car manufacturer keeping crash test results private, a restaurant refusing to provide health inspection logs, or a government refusing to disclose details of its budget allocation — all claiming that transparency would only complicate matters and provide "more data for distrust". In each case, the flawed nature of your core argument becomes obviously evident. I fully…

I don't think you can reasonably compare the importance of transparency in your examples to that of editorial decisions in a private moderated community. In the first set, the stakes are far higher, which is why the collection of objective data is legally mandated in the first place. In the second set, you have only the subjective opinions of people who have an explicit goal to cultivate a specific variety of communi…

It's perfectly reasonable for private communities to have their own sets of rules and regulations. I'm simply pointing out an example of the all-too-common situation pervading certain communities where clear mechanisms of ideological projection and indoctrination (i.e. censorship, non-transparency, etc) are present but unseeable to many members of the community since it supports their existing ideological beliefs. a.k.a. Cognitive dissonance

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

#530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Envision an airline withholding safety records, a car manufacturer keeping crash test results private, a restaurant refusing to provide health inspection logs, or a government refusing to disclose details of its budget allocation — all claiming that transparency would only complicate matters and provide "more data for distrust". In each case, the flawed nature of your core argument becomes obviously evident. I fully…

I have to admit, I laughed when I realized you are using a throwaway account, making this a strange work of performance art.

My original account was shadow-banned by HN years ago (probably by @dang) due to some overly heated political discourse bs.

Hence my interest in debating @dang's straw-man response....and nowadays, using throwaway accounts is often the only way others even see opposing viewpoints on topics like this.

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