OkCupid Deletes Post “Your Looks and Your Inbox” • Hacker News Board

Re: OkCupid Deletes Post “Your Looks and Your Inbox”

#41

Post by gus_massa » Fri, May 04, 2018, 2:01 PM UTC

J-dawg wrote: post #22

Why do posts like this get flagged so often? This relates directly to a tech company, and is about the intersection of tech & societal trends which many people here are interested in. It seems like perfectly valid HN content. Do flagged posts get reviewed by moderators, or does HN allow a minority of users to flag whatever they want out of existence?

I don't know the details, but the [flagged] mark is added automatically when enough users flag the post, probably it consider the fags to upvotes ratio, but I'm guessing here. With even more flags the story may be killed.

The mods usually take a look at the stream of post, specialy the flagged ones, but there are too many posts and in case you find something classified too badly you can email them hn@ycombinator.com , they usually reply soon, but it's manual process so use it wisely.

My guess here is that some users flagged it because the incel angle. It looks like a exaggeration, but I'm still not sure. So I'm not hitting any buttons here [no upvote, no flag, no email to the mods].

[My interpretation is that a log time ago OkCupid posted some silly story with some data and dubious analysis as a marketing strategy. Now they have been acquired and they must pose as a serious business, so they delete the old posts that are too polemic or politically incorrect, so ... I'm not sure that there is a connection or not.]

Re: OkCupid Deletes Post “Your Looks and Your Inbox”

#42

Post by cimmanom » Fri, May 04, 2018, 2:04 PM UTC

J-dawg wrote: post #38

cimmanom wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a distinction to be made between "people who are unable to find sexual partners" and "people who self-identify with and participate in communities that spew hatred and encourage violence over the fact that they can't find sexual partners". Sort of like the difference between "white people" and "white supremacists". Except that currently we don't have separate (reasonably brief) terms for the above cat…

I think this "intolerance of intolerance" is becoming terrifying. I personally find "people who hate people with a different skin colour" and "people who hate women" to be repulsive. I'd prefer not to work with those people, if possible. But I accept that in a free society, I might have to. I have no special right to be protected from opinions I don't like, and nor should I. Nobody should be excluded from employment…

It is the rare person who can prevent their hate from leaking out into their day to day interactions and making their coworkers uncomfortable - thus interfering with morale and the company's viability.

Re: OkCupid Deletes Post “Your Looks and Your Inbox”

#43

Post by dvfjsdhgfv » Fri, May 04, 2018, 2:18 PM UTC

J-dawg wrote: post #39

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On HN flagging is used not just for spam, but often for content you don't agree with; especially if you strongly don't agree with it. In this case you think this content shouldn't be on HN and click "flag". If enough people do that, the post disappears. There's nothing you can do about it.

> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did. Flagging is supposed to be used for spam or off-topic content. People who flag stuff they don't agree with are not following the guidelines of this community. 'whalesalad' is apparently breakin…

This is theory. What I describe is how this works in practice: commenters on HN use flag as a tool to silence opposing views. It happens every day, hard to overlook it.

Re: OkCupid Deletes Post “Your Looks and Your Inbox”

#44

Post by gus_massa » Fri, May 04, 2018, 2:34 PM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #24

Avamander wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A normative solution is better than no solution. Please explain how. I think it's literally the worst idea to go poking people already on the edge with their hate and misery.

No solution means not telling these people at all that their ideas aren't going to get them anywhere and letting them fester in their hatred. I agree that it could be done without the vitriol. Not entirely sure how, but I agree in theory that it's possible. But objectively speaking, the incel viewpoint is more caustic than the common reaction to it. I'm not saying that people who identify as incels deserve it, but th…

> This is essentially modern heresy in action. Social cohesion is far more important than both your obstinacy and your problems, and if you persist, we will burn your ass at the stake. It's ugly, it's sad, we wish we didn't have to do it, but it reflects the reality of society.

The "social cohesion" argument is too wide. It could have been applied in the past for example to suppress the women suffrage movement. What was more important the women suffrage or the social cohesion of the 1900 society? I like the women suffrage and I dislike the incel viewpoint, but I don't understand how can you apply the self censorship or get burn argument only to the things that you dislike.

Re: OkCupid Deletes Post “Your Looks and Your Inbox”

#45

Post by vinceguidry » Fri, May 04, 2018, 2:57 PM UTC

gus_massa wrote: post #44

vinceguidry wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No solution means not telling these people at all that their ideas aren't going to get them anywhere and letting them fester in their hatred. I agree that it could be done without the vitriol. Not entirely sure how, but I agree in theory that it's possible. But objectively speaking, the incel viewpoint is more caustic than the common reaction to it. I'm not saying that people who identify as incels deserve it, but th…

> This is essentially modern heresy in action. Social cohesion is far more important than both your obstinacy and your problems, and if you persist, we will burn your ass at the stake. It's ugly, it's sad, we wish we didn't have to do it, but it reflects the reality of society. The "social cohesion" argument is too wide. It could have been applied in the past for example to suppress the women suffrage movement. What…

There's no ultimate morality here, only people fighting to make their views the orthodox ones. Heretics fight against a force much bigger than them. If they want to be taken seriously, they need to take the next step and form a rebellion, get other people on their side.

This is even more serious than heresy, this is called apostasy. Apostates don't get stoned by their peers, they get crucified by the army. But sometimes civil war is necessary to improve the morality of society. Suffrage was one of those times.

It's the common people that adhere to the orthodoxy that does the burning. Not the censors or the inquisition, who had bigger fish to fry. You won't find me out there tarring and feathering incels.

I'm actually somewhat sympathetic to their viewpoint. What I'm not sympathetic at all to is their stubborn obstinacy. Feminism is more important than your sexual satisfaction.

The answer to the incel situation is sex positivism. There is no holy war needed here. Sex positivism is an orthodox solution. The heretics just need to come back to Jesus.

Re: OkCupid Deletes Post “Your Looks and Your Inbox”

#46

Post by extra88 » Fri, May 04, 2018, 3:10 PM UTC

J-dawg wrote: post #38

cimmanom wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a distinction to be made between "people who are unable to find sexual partners" and "people who self-identify with and participate in communities that spew hatred and encourage violence over the fact that they can't find sexual partners". Sort of like the difference between "white people" and "white supremacists". Except that currently we don't have separate (reasonably brief) terms for the above cat…

I think this "intolerance of intolerance" is becoming terrifying. I personally find "people who hate people with a different skin colour" and "people who hate women" to be repulsive. I'd prefer not to work with those people, if possible. But I accept that in a free society, I might have to. I have no special right to be protected from opinions I don't like, and nor should I. Nobody should be excluded from employment…

I also prefer not to work with people with such bad views but I think I could. However, I also want to work with women and PoC and as the object of someone's hatred, it would presumably be harder for them; their absence would be worse for the organization, themselves, and me personally.

My starting point is I don't think what you say or do outside the workplace should have bearing on your employment. Lots of people have bad, crazy ideas that don't significantly affect their performance.

Re: OkCupid Deletes Post “Your Looks and Your Inbox”

#47

Post by GetThreadCtxt » Fri, May 04, 2018, 3:35 PM UTC

whalesalad wrote: post #12

I don't think this has anything to do with the incel movement. It was a risky post to begin with. This tweet is making a lot of assumptions. Flagging as no good discussion can come from this post on HN.

The timing of the deletion is what seems suspicious. On the other hand, it could be related to Christian Rudder's somewhat disastrous keynote at CHI (the largest academic human-computer interaction conference) last week:

https://www.reddit.com/r/chideviance/comments/8eenaj/people_...

https://www.reddit.com/r/sciences/comments/8edxm3/controvers...

But anyway I agree that this topic is gasoline-soaked and unlikely to produce much of value.

Re: OkCupid Deletes Post “Your Looks and Your Inbox”

#48

Post by modbait » Fri, May 04, 2018, 4:35 PM UTC

himom wrote: post #21

Why would anyone with integrity and self-respect subject themselves to flawed, unnatural and zero investment world that are dating apps? Can you imagine how lazy, distracted and confused are the users of these apps are in real life? Just stick to the real-world, screen the square root of as many people as you could ever meet in your remaining life-expectancy and pick the best one that comes along next. No Paradox of…

Met my wife on OKCupid. Admittedly, it was quite a stroke of luck, but you only need one.

Re: OkCupid Deletes Post “Your Looks and Your Inbox”

#49

Post by dang » Fri, May 04, 2018, 5:43 PM UTC

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #36

J-dawg wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Flagging as no good discussion can come from this ..in your opinion. Why do you feel the need to silence that discussion? I get that HN is a forum with its own rules and as such there is no automatic "right" to free speech, but is this really what flagging is for? Flagging should be used for spam and other content which simply doesn't belong on a tech-related forum. Not for just removing stuff that you personally d…

On HN flagging is used not just for spam, but often for content you don't agree with; especially if you strongly don't agree with it. In this case you think this content shouldn't be on HN and click "flag". If enough people do that, the post disappears. There's nothing you can do about it.

If people flag civil, substantive comments just because they don't like them, that's an abuse of flagging, and we eventually take away their flagging rights.

Flagging is for posts that break the site guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Re: OkCupid Deletes Post “Your Looks and Your Inbox”

#50

Post by mindcrash » Fri, May 04, 2018, 7:34 PM UTC

I think it has more to do with Zuckergate than Incelgate.

In case you didn't know OkCupid and Facebook's data research teams are in strong competition regarding which team is most borderline unethical, as evidenced for example here: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/29/okcupid-e....