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Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

drewdevault.com

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Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#261

Post by zorpner »

wvenable wrote: post #144
andrewguenther wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found moderation on HN to be a bit heavy handed recently. Specifically when it comes to the issue of sexism in SV. No matter the opinion, posts on this seem to get removed shortly after reaching the front page. Question for the mods: Why? It doesn't appear to be a bias towards either side. Is the perception just that people are tied of hearing about it? Why not let the users decide that?

Huge flame wars get a lot of upvotes and lots of comments -- but it's essentially the forum equivalent of candy. If you want your forum to have some nutritional value than you can't let the candy topics run rampant no matter how much people seem to want them.

It should be noted that this is an explicit strategy by proponents of the status quo, to make any discussion of the topic so toxic that the topic itself becomes banned.

It's possible to moderate a discussion forum to avoid this, but it requires a high level of involvement from the moderators and a willingness to aggressively recognize and prune divisive commentary regardless of the specific tone or content.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#262

Post by twobyfour »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #101
arkades wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a difference between a state actor controlling the whole of the public arena and a private individual controlling their own privately-sponsored forum; the latter allows you to crack open a blog and flog whatever opinion you want, and the former does not. I admit there’s some gray area for something like google, which by virtue of its size and role as intermediary has censorship abilities approaching governmen…

This argument is touted around a lot to justify censorship by private parties. Don't be misled - it is censorship. The law doesn't protect this kind of speech, which means they are legally permitted to participate in censorship, but it is censorship all the same. Yours is a common and poor argument for justifying this behavior. There are plenty of things which are both legal and immoral . I would prefer to participat…

So are you suggesting that if I (the grandchild of Holocaust survivors) ran a link aggregator site, I would have a moral obligation to let self-declared Nazis who want to exterminate people of my ethnicity use it as a platform to speak about their hatred of people like me?

Or that a rape survivor has an obligation to allow someone to post on their site that there's no such thing as rape and every woman is "asking for it"?

I deeply question your moral framework.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#263

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

Each news outlet serves some purpose, that's why people bother to maintain it; so it has some degree of editorial policy (determined by the collective action of the editors).

I for one think that I am spending too much time here (relative to the stuff that I learn). (Lets see how long I can keep off site, after all this is adictive ;-)

I would appreciate it if someone would come up with a filter, HN on tech subjects only, and no politics and business stories - a mere title line is not enough to figure out the context (but they do that on purpose, to involve more people that way, don't they :-) actually I guess that would be easy to do with NLP tagging...

One thing that I dislike with both HN and reddit style moderation system is that the subject of the editorial action has no idea that he/she has been edited out. I think that actually gives the pleasant feeling of being in an insane asylum. Anybody can relate ti this sentiment?

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#264

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

twobyfour wrote: post #262
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument is touted around a lot to justify censorship by private parties. Don't be misled - it is censorship. The law doesn't protect this kind of speech, which means they are legally permitted to participate in censorship, but it is censorship all the same. Yours is a common and poor argument for justifying this behavior. There are plenty of things which are both legal and immoral . I would prefer to participat…

So are you suggesting that if I (the grandchild of Holocaust survivors) ran a link aggregator site, I would have a moral obligation to let self-declared Nazis who want to exterminate people of my ethnicity use it as a platform to speak about their hatred of people like me? Or that a rape survivor has an obligation to allow someone to post on their site that there's no such thing as rape and every woman is "asking for…

No, and that's not what I'm asking of HN. I like communities that:

- Have well defined rules

- Enforce them equally

- Moderate transaprently

That's it. I'm not asking for an unfettered platform for free speech. If one of your rules is "no hateful posts targetting specific people or people groups", then it's a well justified decision to remove that post.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#265

Post by sctb »

feelin_googley wrote: post #258
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Dan and Scott were kings, they would be fucking epic. Best monarchs ever. It's hard to think of anyone who cares more about fairness, but clever enough to decide for themselves. And they're usually right. I think I can count on one hand the number of mistakes they've made that even remotely mattered. And from a strategic standpoint, that number is effectively zero. There are probably a bunch of people behind the s…

https://github.com/sctb/woe Indeed this is cool. To compile on BSD, I used gcc -static -std=c89 -Wall -pedantic -o woe woe.c -lm

Do you mind opening an issue or just emailing me (scott at yc) the error you see?

Edit: fixed, thanks!

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#266

Post by j_s »

losteverything wrote: post #179

I never gave thought to the moderator position till this analysis. I wonder if it is a full time job. Do other sites have full time moderators? Moderators are needed, of course and im glad i am not one. But i can only imagine how much of a burn out job with little satisfaction it must be. Like data entry jobs in the past. To compare and contrast, if you are a construction worker making residential housing, you and se…

Meet the People Taking over Hacker News | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7493856 (Mar 2014, 286 comments)

Tell HN: New features and a moderator | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12073675 (Jul 2016, 451 comments)

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#267

Post by trgv »

ddevault wrote: post #230
trgv wrote: post #197

Here are some posts whose flags I consider questionable: Harvey, the Storm That Humans Helped Cause (23 points) ES6 imports syntax considered harmful (12 points) White-Owned Restaurants Shamed for Serving Ethnic Food (33 points) The evidence is piling up – Silicon Valley is being destroyed (27 points) Personally I'm glad all of these posts were flagged.

You might disagree with them, but were they violating the guidelines? Rules should not be selectively enforced, and made-up rules should definitely not be enforced.

I think they were violating guidelines in that they qualified as off-topic. Is that worth a flag? I'm not sure.

But I don't think they should have been flagged "because I disagree with them."

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#268

Post by twobyfour »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #264
twobyfour wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are you suggesting that if I (the grandchild of Holocaust survivors) ran a link aggregator site, I would have a moral obligation to let self-declared Nazis who want to exterminate people of my ethnicity use it as a platform to speak about their hatred of people like me? Or that a rape survivor has an obligation to allow someone to post on their site that there's no such thing as rape and every woman is "asking for…

No, and that's not what I'm asking of HN. I like communities that: - Have well defined rules - Enforce them equally - Moderate transaprently That's it. I'm not asking for an unfettered platform for free speech. If one of your rules is "no hateful posts targetting specific people or people groups", then it's a well justified decision to remove that post.

OK.... so if I enforce "no hateful posts targetting specific people or people groups", I have to ban the person who posts "the KKK are awful people and I think we should jail them" as I do someone who posts "people with dark skin are awful people and I think we should burn them"?

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#269

Post by TeMPOraL »

bradleyjg wrote: post #167
andrewguenther wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found moderation on HN to be a bit heavy handed recently. Specifically when it comes to the issue of sexism in SV. No matter the opinion, posts on this seem to get removed shortly after reaching the front page. Question for the mods: Why? It doesn't appear to be a bias towards either side. Is the perception just that people are tied of hearing about it? Why not let the users decide that?

The users are deciding. We are flagging these stories because we don't see the value in endless flamewars over the same subject. If you can't get enough of debates about sexism in SV there are lots of other places on the internet for that.

I agree. I don't generally touch stories about new and important events on that topic, but when it's just a random gender-related submission that's bound to induce a flamewar in comments, I just flag it.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#270

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

twobyfour wrote: post #268
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, and that's not what I'm asking of HN. I like communities that: - Have well defined rules - Enforce them equally - Moderate transaprently That's it. I'm not asking for an unfettered platform for free speech. If one of your rules is "no hateful posts targetting specific people or people groups", then it's a well justified decision to remove that post.

OK.... so if I enforce "no hateful posts targetting specific people or people groups", I have to ban the person who posts "the KKK are awful people and I think we should jail them" as I do someone who posts "people with dark skin are awful people and I think we should burn them"?

No. It's a gray area. What matters is being transparent and receptive to discussion about it.
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