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Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?

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Re: Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?

#61

Post by skwirl »

It isn't the quantity of Snowden stories that are the problem. It is the tenuous relationship with reality of many of the "stories" that have been posted that is the problem. This morning we had a story at #1 for quite a while that claimed Twitter was censoring #Snowden from trending in the United States. Instead of actually going to Twitter and seeing that this was a ridiculous claim, people just kept upvoting it because it sounded like something they should upvote. This is a phenomenon that all sites with voting systems on submissions have. People tend to go and satisfy their slacktivism itch by upvoting headlines that they agree with without actually reading the articles or really thinking about them.

To the moderators' credit, they deleted the Twitter "censorship" submission. I know they have deleted some other very low quality Snowden/NSA related articles as well.

Re: Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?

#62

Post by itafroma »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #9

Agreed. At some point I flagged every snowden/NSA story on the front page (I believe it was 28 out of 30). I don't seem to be able to flag any more so I guess that was picked up as abuse, so unfortunately I can't flag any more of these stories. I wouldn't mind seeing stories on all of this, as long as they are only posted when something interesting has actually happened, as opposed to just because there hasn't been a…

> I don't seem to be able to flag anymore so I guess that was picked up as abuse, so unfortunately I can't flag anymore of these stories.

Same here, though I believe I lost my flagging ability after 2 or 3 Snowden stories. Definitely a heads up for anyone else who might think these types of stories hit the "Off-topic: Most stories about politics" part of the post guidelines.

Re: Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?

#63

Post by thezach »

Because Congress and the President clearly care about how many upvotes some cause gets on Hacker News.... seriously voting something up on Hacker News isn't advocacy at all and I can guarantee that everyone on Hacker News is pretty much 400% more educated on this issue than the general public.

If your passionate about something and you feel it needs to change write your congressman a hand written letter. Go visit their local office. Remind them your the person who decides if their unemployed during the next election.

If your passionate enough that you need to upvote everything on a subject then spend 10-15 minutes a day and write a handwritten letter to one of your elected officials. Thats more likely to make a difference than upvoting on hacker news.

Re: Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?

#64

Post by jchung »

swombat wrote: post #28

Please post more about Snowden, PRISM, NSA, GCHQ, and all the rest. I will upvote every one of them. For those who think that "we all know essentially how this will end", think about what the world would look like if every major change had been met with this kind of pitiful attitude. Every revolution, every change for the better, has come out of people rejecting that sentiment. It's not too late to turn away from the…

Mass upvoting helps exactly nobody. It's slacktivism, not activism.

If you feel strongly about this cause, I would encourage you to stop mass upvoting, and get involved in the real world. Perhaps your action would merit its own post to HN, and something that would inspire others to join you in action. You might end up doing something amazing.

Re: Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?

#65

Post by levosmetalo »

gori wrote: post #8

This is a story that people are upvoting because they find it interesting. It is also a very active one, where new interesting information is coming up all the time. And "Edward Snowden's fate is grim" so we should stop caring about him? I'm glad to not see this story go away, and I am actually understanding the issues better because of the articles about it here. Let the community decide what should be on here.

And how can community decide on highly controversial topic if only upvotes are counted?

Re: Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?

#66

Post by dubcanada »

Sandman wrote: post #40
ck2 wrote: post #11

If it bothers you, take the bigrss feed here and put it through an rss filter to remove the articles you do not like? I did that for Steve Jobs. I personally want to read every new element about the Snowden effect but I realize not everyone else does.

If it bothers you, take the bigrss feed here and put it through an rss filter to remove the articles you do not like? This doesn't solve the bigger problem, namely, that posting countless stories on Snowden is really killing HN. Seriously, we're one step away from having stories on what Snowden had for lunch on his flight to Moscow on the front page. I don't buy the "Let the community decide what should be on the fro…

Wait he's flying to Moscow?

Joking aside if there is a story about his lunch on his way to Moscow, which also means he is flying to Moscow. That's important.

I'm indifferent about the situation because I don't live in US. But it still matters, you're just not interested in it. So you should do what he says and mentally filter it out. If this was 9/11 or something you felt more connected with (I'm not saying 9/11 is it, but I'm assuming your American and probably feel something for that date), you would not be saying this to begin with.

Re: Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?

#67

Post by criley2 »

gori wrote: post #12
shawabawa3 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is posting hundreds of mundane "news" articles with no substance really fighting?

Is not talking about it better?

How about- and I know this is shocking- we find a balance.

A balance between nothing and tabloid.

We're dangerously close to tabloid currently. Lots of irrelevant articles, lots of speculation and opinion, and the real stories are hidden in the noise.

I still think about 80% of the Snowden articles are worse than useless -- they're actively hiding the 20% of articles that are worthwhile, that we should all be reading.

But hey, I guess diverting our attention to the pointless bits of the story is an effective diversion tactic /conspiracy

Re: Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?

#69

Post by DanielBMarkham »

DanBC wrote: post #49
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #39

This is a story of a hacker, a sysadmin, one of us, who made a choice that could very well cost him his life. He is now being pursued all over the globe by the world's largest super-power, which has yet to catch him. His story directly addresses the role of technology in anonymity and privacy, and the details of his story are full of lots of fun technical details. In addition, he's carrying notebooks that have even m…

> but as far as getting attention on HN? What else would you expect? No-one is calling for zero Snowden articles. What people are asking for is for a reduction in the flood of Snowden trivia. "Snowden Does X" will be reported by the twelve different news sources, and each of these will be posted to HN. Some of these will have blogpost reactions, which also get posted. An hour later some politician will respond to "Sn…

Front page stories on HN right now that mention Snowden:

"Edward Snowden is not on the flight from Moscow to Cuba"

and

"Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?"

I'm not sure what you're complaining about. Has there been a bunch of noise/trivial stories about Snowden? No doubt. But I already said that.

Looks like the voting system is working as it should.

Re: Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?

#70

Post by levosmetalo »

DanBC wrote: post #38
mehwoot wrote: post #13

This is a problem with Hacker News. Maybe because most people can't downvote (or I dunno some other reason), it has a big big problem with duplicate stories. When Steve Jobs died for example, 30/30 stories were "Steve Jobs has died" for quite some time. It is irritating, that's for sure.

People can flag submissions. I don't know if there's a karma threshold for flagging. People should be visiting new and flagging articles that don't belong here, and upvoting good articles. It's a bit worrying that "over flagging" could cause someone to lose their ability to flag articles - some users have reported that. Still, most of the Snowden articles are garbage and should be flagged.

No you can't flag stories. Theoretically you can, but if you try to actually flag 25 Snowden stories today, since all of them are off-topic according to HN guidelines, your flag ability will be removed in a matter of minutes.
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