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The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)

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Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)

#61

Post by andrewfromx »

cinntaile wrote: post #13
andrewfromx wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't wait for https://www.deso.org/ to take off, not just for the value of the coin to increase, but to see lots of nodes taking over the responsibility of twitter/fb/youtube etc's what's okay and what's not. There will be someone willing to run a node that has all the stuff blocked or unblocked to suit everyone's tastes.

Isn't that how the different Matrix servers work already?

Incentives! You have to listen to Nader Al-Naji explain the vision. It gives me goosebumps.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)

#62

Post by optimalsolver »

loceng wrote: post #22
awb wrote: post #6

Question for the mods: In the old days I don’t remember as much political / world news allowed. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. But I’ve seen more types of TV news s…

I think "political" content being so heavily suppressed is the community abdicating responsibility; and also is a sign of how much users here aren't able to emotionally regulate to have civil conversation [which is a signal of strength, of health - physical and mental health, mastery of oneself, self-control] - so much practically everything important - including the Emergency Act (war measures act aka martial law) b…

I've never seen an online community improved by more object-level political discussion.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)

#63

Post by tptacek »

dekhn wrote: post #30

I mostly appreciate the mods (well, dang is the only one I've interacted with) but I'm pretty tired of being scolded for occasionally making one-sentence comments that lack substance, while in the meantime, the site tolerates people who write pages of absolutely untrue covid vax denialism but don't get any comments from the mods. At this point I'm actively looking for a replacement community that focuses much more on…

Stop making insubstantial one-line comments, please.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)

#64

Post by zozbot234 »

ksec wrote: post #54
awb wrote: post #6

Question for the mods: In the old days I don’t remember as much political / world news allowed. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. But I’ve seen more types of TV news s…

I "think", most of those debate ties with technology one way or another. Say Joe Rogan's issue may not have been allowed on HN if it wasn't for Spotify. And more broadly speaking, what are the roles of technology in an extremely political sensitive climate. Should Telegram do A or B, and what about Whatsapp, Facebook moderation, Apple App Store disallow certain group, is that a curation problem or a political problem…

inb4 HN stories about Canadian truckers are just gorilla advertising for self-driving trucks! New marketing slogan: "Self-driving truck don't need to get vaccine" /s

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)

#65

Post by edmcnulty101 »

loceng wrote: post #26
edmcnulty101 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very hard to define specific political content as separate from technology. I remember a single Covid scientific paper turning into a 500 post political discussion. Or tech giants and censorship and privacy. How does one separate tech from politics in this sense? Maybe society has become more political and it's making it's way to link aggregator sites?

Technology is used as political tools/weapons to drive and manufacture consent, through promoting hate and creating divisiveness - and through captured mainstream media channels, and online platforms; this couldn't be any more obvious with Trudeau's behaviours and observing the mainstream landscape of what the majority of Canadians are seeing. And so you're correct - politics and technology is intertwined, but HN is…

You're preaching to the choir here about mainstream media being super corrupt.

Puts a lot of pressure on one or two hacker news mods to be the purveyors of neutrality for the entire media landscape if that's what's expected.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)

#66

Post by dec0dedab0de »

codewithcheese wrote: post #40
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without getting into the details of each particular submission I’m curious if you think the submission standards have remained consistent throughout the years or if your curation philosophy has changed at all and if so, in what ways? There was a change a while back that made the front page less volatile, around that time you started seeing stories merged more often, and traditional news creeping in a bit more. I thin…

I think it's quite different now, the gap between HN and lobste.rs content is growing wider and wider, lobste.rs to me represents more closely what "old" HN was like

I'm still annoyed I couldn't find someone I knew to give me an invite to lobste.rs 9 years ago. I remember asking former coworkers, and people at local tech meetups, and getting blank stares like I was making something up. Though I suppose that is how they managed to keep things under control

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)

#68

Post by ciphol »

robertakarobin wrote: post #16
optimalsolver wrote: post #4

I've noticed that all the online spaces I enjoy visiting are heavily moderated. Whenever I get linked to "free speech" loosely-moderated platforms, I usually hit the back button pretty quick.

Yes, in general "free speech" platforms seem to quickly turn into Alt-Right platforms that are, ironically, heavily moderated. (Looking at you, Voat)

Because the only people who feel the personal need for a "free speech" platform are the ones whose views are considered odious elsewhere.

If people with non-"odious" views end up at such a platform, they will quickly notice the unusual concentration of "odious" views, and generally find it uncomfortable and leave. Thus there is a steady increase in the prevalence of "odious" views until they are near-universal on the platform.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)

#69

Post by kenjackson »

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #8
awb wrote: post #6

Question for the mods: In the old days I don’t remember as much political / world news allowed. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. But I’ve seen more types of TV news s…

It's very hard to define specific political content as separate from technology. I remember a single Covid scientific paper turning into a 500 post political discussion. Or tech giants and censorship and privacy. How does one separate tech from politics in this sense? Maybe society has become more political and it's making it's way to link aggregator sites?

Tech and political ideologies have collapsed, and especially in areas of interest to HN. Climate change, when a fetus is a baby, etc... these are areas where science has intersected politics before HN existed, but they also don't intersect HN regularly.

But now some of the hot topics in tech are also hot topics in politics-- privacy and mass surveillance, platform censorship, vaccinations/medicine(which were a little political, became super political), affirmitive action in the tech industry, etc...

I don't know if we'll ever go back to where we were as tech plays a larger and larger role. And if you think we're intertwined now, just wait until the metaverse!

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)

#70

Post by axiomsEnd »

optimalsolver wrote: post #4

I've noticed that all the online spaces I enjoy visiting are heavily moderated. Whenever I get linked to "free speech" loosely-moderated platforms, I usually hit the back button pretty quick.

Slate Star Codex put it nicely "The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong."
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