Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Does "dead" status on HackerNews means suppression of the freedom of speech?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 31 posts

Re: Does "dead" status on HackerNews means suppression of the freedom of speech?

#21

Post by detaro »

minimaxir wrote: post #19
detaro wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is ok to share your own stuff. I mean, look at the submission history of the guy you are responding to ;) minimaxir posts tons of his own content, but it is good content, and he also participates on the site otherwise. Also, agreed with CarolineW. Show examples.

The key word the OP mentioned is only : Here is his example account: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=grisanik All submissions are from one domain, and there are barely any comments.

IMHO (as a user, but one that you'll often find in the new-queue) what is critical here that

a) none of these got any user engagement (ok, some got an upvote or two and a single one actually managed to attract a comment)

b) despite this, there is a constant stream of several submissions per week

c) the user didn't comment on other articles, but just "dropped off" their content

EDIT: regarding the last edit: I don't care for Musk-news either, but if it is not spammed and not duplicate I have no reason to flag it, and apparently enough people care to upvote it. I upvote if people submit something cool they made. Others do as well, the stuff many people find cool rises. "I just added a tiny boring feature to my boring app", not so much.

Re: Does "dead" status on HackerNews means suppression of the freedom of speech?

#22

Post by AnimalMuppet »

DanBC wrote: post #16

(I'm not a mod or admin, so I'm not sure about this stuff. Perhaps I'm wrong.) 1) Hacker News has a variety of methods for marking submissions or comments as dead. Not all of these require moderator intervention. Many submissions are marked dead by spam filters. Or they're killed by user flags. Some comments are caught in spam filters, or the user has been caught in a hellban. Or sometimes users flag the comment (I t…

Could you define "hellbanned" for me? I've seen that term several times, but I don't know what it actually means.

Re: Does "dead" status on HackerNews means suppression of the freedom of speech?

#23

Post by CarolineW »

Firstly, the faq says not to ask this kind of question here, but to email them. Have you done that?

Secondly, many things on HN are automated, the volume of work would be too large otherwise. Consider, you submit item after item, getting no comments and no upvotes. I'm not surprised an automated system would mark it as probable spam, especially since you've never commented on anything else. You have been behaving just as a spammer would.

Which takes me back to the first point: have you asked the mods? Complaining here just makes you look bad.

Re: Does "dead" status on HackerNews means suppression of the freedom of speech?

#24

Post by CarolineW »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #22
DanBC wrote: post #16

(I'm not a mod or admin, so I'm not sure about this stuff. Perhaps I'm wrong.) 1) Hacker News has a variety of methods for marking submissions or comments as dead. Not all of these require moderator intervention. Many submissions are marked dead by spam filters. Or they're killed by user flags. Some comments are caught in spam filters, or the user has been caught in a hellban. Or sometimes users flag the comment (I t…

Could you define "hellbanned" for me? I've seen that term several times, but I don't know what it actually means.

Have you tried googling it? The Wikipedia entry seems to cover it pretty well.

Re: Does "dead" status on HackerNews means suppression of the freedom of speech?

#25

Post by [deleted] »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #22
DanBC wrote: post #16

(I'm not a mod or admin, so I'm not sure about this stuff. Perhaps I'm wrong.) 1) Hacker News has a variety of methods for marking submissions or comments as dead. Not all of these require moderator intervention. Many submissions are marked dead by spam filters. Or they're killed by user flags. Some comments are caught in spam filters, or the user has been caught in a hellban. Or sometimes users flag the comment (I t…

Could you define "hellbanned" for me? I've seen that term several times, but I don't know what it actually means.

[deleted]

Re: Does "dead" status on HackerNews means suppression of the freedom of speech?

#26

Post by oldmanjay »

I'm not involved with HN or YC in any way, I'm just a cranky old man.

Your definition of censorship ignores that you have no basic right to publish using facilities you don't own.

Also, considering we can opt in to seeing the dead items, they aren't even censored by your loose definition of the term, they are just inconvenient to access.

Re: Does "dead" status on HackerNews means suppression of the freedom of speech?

#27

Post by kjs3 »

Freedom of speech means you are free to express your opinions. Freedom of speech does not mean a private, third party is obligated to provide you with a forum to express your opinions. You have an almost infinite opportunity to express yourself on the internet; get over yourself.

I've been hellbanned apparently, which ever so slightly annoys me considering it was for stuff that "cooler" posters don't have an eye batted at, but I don't pretend HN owes me anything.

Re: Does "dead" status on HackerNews means suppression of the freedom of speech?

#28

Post by AnimalMuppet »

CarolineW wrote: post #24
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you define "hellbanned" for me? I've seen that term several times, but I don't know what it actually means.

Have you tried googling it? The Wikipedia entry seems to cover it pretty well.

Well, no, I didn't, because I assumed it was an HN-specific term.

To whoever downvoted CarolineW: She didn't answer my question, but she pointed me to the answer, which I thought was good enough.

Re: Does "dead" status on HackerNews means suppression of the freedom of speech?

#29

Post by dang »

kjs3 wrote: post #27

Freedom of speech means you are free to express your opinions. Freedom of speech does not mean a private, third party is obligated to provide you with a forum to express your opinions. You have an almost infinite opportunity to express yourself on the internet; get over yourself. I've been hellbanned apparently, which ever so slightly annoys me considering it was for stuff that "cooler" posters don't have an eye batt…

> I've been hellbanned apparently

No, by definition that's banning someone without telling them, and we told you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10545474.

Pretty much the only accounts that we ban without telling them are brand new ones that are spamming or trolling. If a user has any real history here, we tell them that they're banned, and there's a standing invitation for anyone who sincerely intends to improve their behavior on the site to email us and get unbanned. There's also now a mechanism—as other users have explained in this thread—for comments by banned users to get restored by the community on a case-by-case basis.

We're thinking of abolishing shadow-banning altogether and making a big announcement that we've done so, because there's still a lot of misunderstanding around this, and we barely do it anyway. But I don't like to make any big change without first letting it simmer a long time. It's simmering.

Re: Does "dead" status on HackerNews means suppression of the freedom of speech?

#30

Post by ctdonath »

minimaxir wrote: post #19
detaro wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is ok to share your own stuff. I mean, look at the submission history of the guy you are responding to ;) minimaxir posts tons of his own content, but it is good content, and he also participates on the site otherwise. Also, agreed with CarolineW. Show examples.

The key word the OP mentioned is only : Here is his example account: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=grisanik All submissions are from one domain, and there are barely any comments.

Looks like someone's just reflexively promoting their own blog, which contains content largely uninteresting to HN. grisanik posted 3 comments (actual participation) but submitted 30 links (nearly all self-promotion). The applicable adjective is not compelling nor interesting, but relentless.
Post reply on HN