My Show HN was flagged shortly after posting, please help me understand why - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49292975
Ask HN: Why was my Show HN flagged?
1–9 of 9 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why was my Show HN flagged?
#2Possibly because all you have ever done here is post Show HNs. You haven't engaged in discussions outside of your own posts. You have not shared anything that was not your own work.
Hard to say for sure why people flag, but your history looks like someone who is using HN solely for their own personal benefit, not trying to be part of the community.
Re: Ask HN: Why was my Show HN flagged?
#3https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"Please don't use HN primarily for promotion"
Re: Ask HN: Why was my Show HN flagged?
#4https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion"
Sorry but is it still a promotion if I started an open source, have absolutely no commercial benefit from it and think it may be genuinely useful and helpful for people?
It's like telling linus torvalds to not talk about Linux because its "promotion" (not comparing myself or the scale but principally its exactly like that)
Re: Ask HN: Why was my Show HN flagged?
#5AI slop and you do not contribute other than self promotion.
Yes it is promotion.
Re: Ask HN: Why was my Show HN flagged?
#6[flagged]
Re: Ask HN: Why was my Show HN flagged?
#7https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion"
Sorry but is it still a promotion if I started an open source, have absolutely no commercial benefit from it and think it may be genuinely useful and helpful for people? It's like telling linus torvalds to not talk about Linux because its "promotion" (not comparing myself or the scale but principally its exactly like that)
There doesn't have to be commercial gain for it to be promotion. The distinction is promotion vs contribution. If you view HN as a community and all you're doing is saying "look at the thing I made" rather than actively engaging with the community as a whole, then your contribution value to the community is low.
Re: Ask HN: Why was my Show HN flagged?
#8https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion"
Sorry but is it still a promotion if I started an open source, have absolutely no commercial benefit from it and think it may be genuinely useful and helpful for people? It's like telling linus torvalds to not talk about Linux because its "promotion" (not comparing myself or the scale but principally its exactly like that)
[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Why was my Show HN flagged?
#9There are only 30 places on the front page and 30 places on the Show HN page, and thousands of submissions each week (including hundreds of Show HNs each day) trying to get into one of them.
The community has developed an immune response to people just trying to get attention for their own work without first contributing to the community or demonstrating credibility. Since about December 2025 there's been a huge spike in the number of people posting Show HN projects, because coding agents have made it so much easier to build things, and a lot of people are finding it exhausting.
If you want to get your work seen on HN, take some time to establish yourself as a good community member who submits interesting articles from different sources about a variety of topics, and makes insightful comments about different topics. When you post your Show HN project, include an intro post that tells the whole story of why you built it, what challenges you overcame and what you learned.