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DOGE member previously fired by cybersecurity firm for leaking company secrets

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Re: DOGE member previously fired by cybersecurity firm for leaking company secrets

#51

Post by dttze »

dang wrote: post #45
mdhb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t tell me with a straight face when you have access to the data more than anyone that these posts aren’t getting flagged en mass. We are all watching it happen.

Of course. I've spent most of my time this week posting explanations and answering emails about this, so it's a bit odd to hear that I'm denying it, but I understand how these perceptions arise. It may seem strange, but both of these things are true: (1) it's the most-discussed topic that exists on HN right now; and (2) most of the submissions about it are getting flagged. If you think about how the internet (and HN)…

How about you just show who is flagging instead of talking around people? It's trivial to show data about moderation here, but you never do. Why?

Re: DOGE member previously fired by cybersecurity firm for leaking company secrets

#52

Post by [deleted] »

dttze wrote: post #51
dang wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. I've spent most of my time this week posting explanations and answering emails about this, so it's a bit odd to hear that I'm denying it, but I understand how these perceptions arise. It may seem strange, but both of these things are true: (1) it's the most-discussed topic that exists on HN right now; and (2) most of the submissions about it are getting flagged. If you think about how the internet (and HN)…

How about you just show who is flagging instead of talking around people? It's trivial to show data about moderation here, but you never do. Why?

[deleted]

Re: DOGE member previously fired by cybersecurity firm for leaking company secrets

#53

Post by dang »

dttze wrote: post #51
dang wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. I've spent most of my time this week posting explanations and answering emails about this, so it's a bit odd to hear that I'm denying it, but I understand how these perceptions arise. It may seem strange, but both of these things are true: (1) it's the most-discussed topic that exists on HN right now; and (2) most of the submissions about it are getting flagged. If you think about how the internet (and HN)…

How about you just show who is flagging instead of talking around people? It's trivial to show data about moderation here, but you never do. Why?

Voting and flagging are intimate data—I wouldn't dream of disclosing that about anyone. I think most HN users would take that as a betrayal of the basic community contract.

Also, I don't see what good would come of it. It would lead to much more conflict, and would change the character of the site. People would no longer feel free to express their preferences—actually they would no longer be free to express them. This is not a way to fix the problems we face as a community.

Re: DOGE member previously fired by cybersecurity firm for leaking company secrets

#54

Post by pragmatic »

mdhb wrote: post #28
disposition2 wrote: post #24

> The White House wouldn't comment directly on Coristine's employment, but an official who discussed the situation on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters said all DOGE staffers under Musk were working as employees of relevant agencies with security clearances. It sounds like they might want to review how they are doing security clearance reviews (assuming they aren't just a blank check for this gr…

Actual real life clearances take between 6 - 12 months or longer depending on backlogs. These people have zero actual “vetting” but “presidential authority” can just say to give them clearances on the spot which is what happened here. So they have the legal bit of paperwork but it doesn’t actually mean anything. It was just an override of the regular checks and balances and would you believe it it turns out it’s fill…

Even public trust (low level) requires som time to complete.

This person obviously was fasttracked and bypassed the most basic of background checks.

Re: DOGE member previously fired by cybersecurity firm for leaking company secrets

#55

Post by dang »

77pt77 wrote: post #27
mdhb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t tell me with a straight face when you have access to the data more than anyone that these posts aren’t getting flagged en mass. We are all watching it happen.

Some are (also) dead. Dead means, to my understanding, killed by moderation.

Definitely not—nearly all [dead] posts are killed by software, other than the [flagged][dead] ones which are killed by user flags.

Re: DOGE member previously fired by cybersecurity firm for leaking company secrets

#56

Post by dang »

basementcat wrote: post #49
relaxing wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if this standard was applied to any other topic. “We’ve already had four Rust topics this month, better flag any new ones!” This article is not the same news as the others you’ve listed. It’s disingenuous to claim they’re all the same.

While I appreciate all the submissions about running Doom on HDMI dongles, it doesn't affect the health of millions of people. The submissions that are flagged inhibit intelligent discussion about items that affect every person on this forum.

You're right. But this is the perennial question of what sort of site HN is supposed to be. If the criterion for frontpage threads were importance, then HN would be a current affairs site—a completely different place. That's not the mandate we have (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

Optimizing for curiosity [1] means including whimsical things like "Doom on a dongle", "how much do all of the ants in the world weigh", and so on, and less space for a lot of more important things. This follows from the mandate of the site.

Sometimes people feel like we should exclude political stories altogether, but that's not right—what we've learned about optimizing-for-curiosity is that some political discussion needs to be included—just not too much [2].

How much is too much? Well, that's the thing that nobody agrees on. For the people who feel most strongly about a story, it's never too much. That's how "literally the most-discussed topic on the site" turns into the perception "all discussion on this topic is being suppressed" [3].

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978572

Re: DOGE member previously fired by cybersecurity firm for leaking company secrets

#57

Post by anigbrowl »

dang wrote: post #46
anigbrowl wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know perfectly well that the original top comment was expressive and hyperbolic in nature, stop trying to analyze it as if it were a dry quantitative claim. The point, which is extremely obvious, is that many posts are being systematically flagged for reasons of favoritism. They're clearly HN relevant, given that they relate to a tech titan effecting drastic changes in government structure, with significant secur…

Please don't cross into personal attack.

I haven't. It's a critique of the argument.

Re: DOGE member previously fired by cybersecurity firm for leaking company secrets

#58

Post by dang »

anigbrowl wrote: post #57
dang wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't cross into personal attack.

I haven't. It's a critique of the argument.

"You know perfectly well" is a way of accusing another person of being disingenuous and this is a step into personal attack.

We don't know what others know—that would require being a mind-reader—and it's against the site guidelines to be aggressive about it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: DOGE member previously fired by cybersecurity firm for leaking company secrets

#59

Post by fragmede »

dang wrote: post #53
dttze wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about you just show who is flagging instead of talking around people? It's trivial to show data about moderation here, but you never do. Why?

Voting and flagging are intimate data—I wouldn't dream of disclosing that about anyone. I think most HN users would take that as a betrayal of the basic community contract. Also, I don't see what good would come of it. It would lead to much more conflict, and would change the character of the site. People would no longer feel free to express their preferences—actually they would no longer be free to express them. Thi…

Maybe the number of flags a given post has could be exposed? Or other, non PII information about flags, like number of flags from old accounts or accounts with high karma, or showing that a post has the flag shield enabled? Just spitballing here but theres a lack of transparency into the process that throws some people into conspiracy theory land so just imo but it kinda seems like there's got to be some changes that could be done to assuage the fears of the more rational readers, so that we don't get the same boring accusations of some shadowy cabal burying inconvenient stories on every contentious subject. Maybe just linking to the active thread for an MOT for the flagged&dead posts so people can see the topic is being allowed, just elsewhere? Maybe allowing users to mark a thread a dupe instead of just flagging?

(sorry if this has already been asked & answered. I saw the post about turning flags off but haven't seen anything about exposing when it has been)

Re: DOGE member previously fired by cybersecurity firm for leaking company secrets

#60

Post by dang »

fragmede wrote: post #59
dang wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting and flagging are intimate data—I wouldn't dream of disclosing that about anyone. I think most HN users would take that as a betrayal of the basic community contract. Also, I don't see what good would come of it. It would lead to much more conflict, and would change the character of the site. People would no longer feel free to express their preferences—actually they would no longer be free to express them. Thi…

Maybe the number of flags a given post has could be exposed? Or other, non PII information about flags, like number of flags from old accounts or accounts with high karma, or showing that a post has the flag shield enabled? Just spitballing here but theres a lack of transparency into the process that throws some people into conspiracy theory land so just imo but it kinda seems like there's got to be some changes that…

I see where you're coming from, but I don't believe that one can assuage people's fears or diminish accusations this way. It's the other way around: it would just provide more material, more degrees of freedom out of which to curve-fit those pre-existing views.

I could be wrong about this—my own fears and preconceptions definitely affect my thinking here. I fear trying things that can't easily be reversed, because I don't want to cause damage. Also, I'm suspicious of the idea of technical measures to solve non-technical problems. The conflicting emotions and perceptions that dominate this question seem deeply non-technical to me.

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