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Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

drewdevault.com

61–70 of 409 posts

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#61
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Dans explanation in the post: > We downweight posts in response to things that go against the site guidelines, such as when a submission is unsubstantive, baity or sensational. So, this is what's happening already.

Notice how subjective those descriptors are. It's been very clear in the past that moderator intervention is rampant for articles / posts that merely strike a raw nerve.

If they were objective they could be automated. The whole reason for manual moderation is that this is not possible.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#62

Article doesn’t mention what I believe is one mod tool: shadow banning accounts based on IP. I had a bunch of accounts get shadowbanned for no evident reason and after a while I deduced it was based on using the account from a particular cafe’s WiFi. I just created this account and if I go use it from that place I will be banned again by some automated process.

Why did you have so many accounts in the first place? How many is "a bunch"?

I spend enough time slacking off with just one account. I can't imagine getting anything done at all with two or three.

Perhaps that is done to avoid the rate limiter?

I can usually only make five posts in one 8-hour span, and then the sixth attempt says, "You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks. Also, don't count the number of posts tptacek can make in one thread in one hour and compare it to your total for the entire week, or it might raise your blood pressure."

I am barred from having more than half a conversation in one day, while it seems that [some] others can post as often as they can hit "[reply]". So yes, I do feel censored on HN. The article didn't even mention the post-rate limits.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#63

Another HN tool moderators use that isn't mentioned in the post is the second-chance pool, where moderators will rescue a post which did not receive many upvotes and give it placement on the front page for a bit of time.

Yep you'll get an email like this:

> We thought you might like to know that we put https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14522178 in the second-chance pool, so it will get a random placement on the front page sometime in the next 24 hours.

> This is part of an experiment in giving good HN submissions multiple chances at the front page. If you're curious, you can read about it at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380 and other links there. And if you don't want these emails, sorry! Tell us and we won't do it again.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though HN is a community, the front page is essentially the mods' personal judgment. They are the editors, and HN is a newspaper. I like it this way. They have excellent taste. The community has repeatedly proven it cannot be trusted to upvote intellectually gratifying content. pg's original HN code contained a flag for "rally", meaning the story is a rallying cry, and is therefore penalized because it's so easy…

HN's cool but it's just one forum among a million others. The moderation is good though sometimes arbitrary. That's a lot easier for users to accept when they know why they are getting positively/negatively moderated, which is a good reason for more openness. But at the end of the day it's a forum, the moderators have the final say, that's the contract you agree to in using it.

If you don't like the way this site is edited, stand up an m1.large, hook Rails up to an sqlite database, and build your own. You'll be two generations of technology ahead of HN.

The freedom to take other people's private belongings and repurpose them to your own ends is no real kind of freedom at all. But that's ultimately what you're yearning for when you allude to the Empire of Napoleon.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#65
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had a bunch of accounts Maybe that is the problem.

He said he registered them from Public Wifi. So anyone registering first account on HN from said cafee will be banned? Why are you so surprised he might have multiple accounts? You really have one email account? How about work-related email? Company-facing related email? If anything, its actually good he has multiple accounts and stuff related to / from his company account he is posting from company, and private is p…

Actually I didn’t say that. The phenomenon in question has nothing to do with where the account was registered. The accounts get banned if I just browse to HN from that cafe. The first account that got banned that way was years old and had 5000+ karma. It took me a while to figure out that it was banned because you can still post and you can see your posts and vote and whatnot but nobody else can see your posts at all. It’s pretty evil.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#66
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN's cool but it's just one forum among a million others. The moderation is good though sometimes arbitrary. That's a lot easier for users to accept when they know why they are getting positively/negatively moderated, which is a good reason for more openness. But at the end of the day it's a forum, the moderators have the final say, that's the contract you agree to in using it.

If you don't like the way this site is edited, stand up an m1.large, hook Rails up to an sqlite database, and build your own. You'll be two generations of technology ahead of HN. The freedom to take other people's private belongings and repurpose them to your own ends is no real kind of freedom at all. But that's ultimately what you're yearning for when you allude to the Empire of Napoleon.

I'm not complaining. HN is about the best of what we've got. My Napoleon reference was the slobbering nature of the comment, which is so pro-moderation as to lose objectivity.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#67
The voting ring detector is in need of a serious upgrade. There are so many cases of vote solicitation by people with meaningful social media following and their posts even make the front page. It's mostly the Product Hunt style "Hey we launched on HN, check us out" which is code for "upvote my post". People have stopped directly linking to the post submission for fear of tripping the voting ring detector, but they either just say "We launched on HN" or link to /newest. Seeing such posts make the front page makes me question the effectiveness of the voting ring detector beyond catching the obvious ones.

A shoutout to `minimaxir for being one of the only people constantly calling out others for such bs. As you can imagine, people get offended for being called out and I remember at least 2 instances of him being treated rudely for doing so on twitter.

If anyone comes across such submissions, please report them to the mods by sending them an email. I'll admit I have not been doing what I suggested, but going forward I will.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#68

In my opinion, far more than moderation, HN is effected by who votes for the new articles. If you look at the "new" page then most stories never even get one upvote. Those who do go over there and upvote stories have far more power than those who only ever look at the front page. Sadly, it seems that there are too many stories on "new" for a person to sit there, read each one, and upvote, so the only real way to get…

[deleted]

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#69
post #38
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is not a government or a political party, it's a privately run link aggregator.

Is this definiton of censorship from Wikipedia incorrect then? "Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information that may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions"

That's not the point. They just don't want to think censorship is an accepted part of their daily lives because censorship often implies oppression. But censorship is part and parcel of almost every forum. The social values of the people who own the forum, as well as incentives behind their operating it, determine what kind of censorship is applied.

For example, on YouTube, hate speech [which I know isn't actually a thing] is commonplace - they don't feel the need (or perhaps don't have the resources) to censor comments which certain people find detestable. But they have created complex systems to analyze videos so that they can identify certain ones and remove them automatically. The end result is that censorship isn't applied uniformly. In one example, a YouTube account that was documenting videos of attacks on the people of Raqqa was flagged for spreading terrorist propaganda. You could make the argument that while the hate speech didn't impact their bottom line, the videos could, so they accept a certain amount of unequal and unintentional censorship in order to maintain their business position, defend their corporate values, and of course, retain their user base.

Moderation is a more nuanced and human approach to censorship. By giving people second chances, answering emails, giving the occasional explanation, etc they build social capital and prevent emotional backlash that could threaten the status of the forum. By helping users to understand the error of their ways and have a chance to redeem themselves, they can't be accused of unfair treatment. But they are indeed imposing specific social and political values on their users, to the point of hiding or removing the post or user when it doesn't align with their values. This shapes not only the quality of the dialogue, but its content. This is the essence of censorship.

To severely paraphrase 1984: "To control speech you control language, as controlling language controls thought."

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#70
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banning by IP is so commonplace that it shouldn't need to be mentioned.

I mention it because the article says shadowbanning is rare. It’s not that rare if they’ve got some kind of stored procedure that just goes around doing it.

It would make no sense to ban an IP for only a single session. Shadowbanning can still be rare (for whatever value of rare) when an IP ban is persistent.
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