Just curious if anyone here, particularly the older guard, have found a pattern of A) Going against the grain on an issue and then B) being targeted with downvotes for pretty much anything else you post for a while after?
Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?
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Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?
#2Let's just say there is a specific slant to the politics here and far too many people would rather down vote than refute an argument.
Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?
#3Not sure about getting cancelled.
But I recently submitted a link containing an uncomfortable truth from Pew Research titled "U.S. has world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households".
It got 30 upvotes in one hour, and quickly reached the front page. It seemed to have gotten shadowbanned by a moderator, as it disappeared to the 5th page despite its quickly gained popularity. It was not flagged, or at least not normally as it would show "[flagged]". I suspect someone with special powers demoted it for whatever reason.
This was the post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26100329
Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?
#4Yes targeted downvoting for not following groupthink happens. Just like everywhere else on the internet that lets anonymous users vote.
But no, having your tally of meaningless internet points decrease isn’t really getting “cancelled”. If downvotes here make you sad, stop looking at them or go do something fun instead. You aren’t going to be uninvited to speak at conferences or lose you job because your HN score goes down.
Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?
#5Not sure about getting cancelled. But I recently submitted a link containing an uncomfortable truth from Pew Research titled "U.S. has world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households". It got 30 upvotes in one hour, and quickly reached the front page. It seemed to have gotten shadowbanned by a moderator, as it disappeared to the 5th page despite its quickly gained popularity. It was not flagged, o…
>it disappeared to the 5th page despite its quickly gained popularity
I have seen this happen many times and have wondered the same thing. It is within the within the rights of whoever runs this site, but I not sure why they believe it would be required... if that is what is happening.
Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?
#6Yes targeted downvoting for not following groupthink happens. Just like everywhere else on the internet that lets anonymous users vote. But no, having your tally of meaningless internet points decrease isn’t really getting “cancelled”. If downvotes here make you sad, stop looking at them or go do something fun instead. You aren’t going to be uninvited to speak at conferences or lose you job because your HN score goes…
>having your tally of meaningless internet points decrease
When you're flagged dead, you effectively disappear. This is wrong in my opinion.
Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?
#7Let's just say there is a specific slant to the politics here and far too many people would rather down vote than refute an argument.
How people view the "slant to the politics here" is determined by (1) their own political slant, and (2) how intensely they hold it. This is one of the most reliable phenomena on HN; there are countless cases going both ways.
Recent post about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25922311
Proposed explanation of why this mechanism is so reliable: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_media_effect
Past, probably too snarky, explanations by me: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Edit: here's what I mean about examples going both ways. In this corner:
"overrun by fascist trolls", "bubble of ignorance and right-wing terrorism", "mostly middle class white male libertarians", "chilling effect on discourse from leftists", "definite right-libertarian bias", "Dang has gone to great lengths to ensure that only far-right [etc.]", "Anything critical of the far-right tends to wind up flagged", "The moderation and users here definitely skew far more conservatively", "cesspool of terrible far-right ideas", "Nazism is pretty popular on HN", "HN has had a problem with bigotry and white supremacy for a long time", "a forum made up of primarily right wing users", "very CLEARLY pro white supremacist", "forbids saying anything against the R Party", "commentary which questions capitalism or america is verboten", "Non libertarian views are not tolerated", "a very specific techno-libertarian Silicon Valley type outlook", "excessively pro-capitalist and woefully dismissive of social justice", "utterly filled with alt-right scum", "overly capitalist ideological Silicon Valley moderation", "the hivemind's right-leaning, libertarian political mindset", "rampant right-wing / libertarian / crypto-fascist", "insurrection apologists in your disgusting community", "HN is a right wing cesspool", "HN as a whole has a conservative tilt", "right-libertarian-leaning HN", "leans right-wing politically, under the guise of being apolitical", "has HN ever been anything other than right-leaning?", "HN has always been pretty far to the right", "entirely filled with right-wing to far-right sheltered techbros", "You simply cannot criticize capitalism", "Can you imagine the kind of slime this forum is managed by?"
and in this corner:
"HN socialist apologia", "the mods are SJW", "socialist-leaning mods" ,"Hacker News the SJW Hole", "you can't be anti-liberal here", "radical leftists appear to have taken control", "tends to be more liberal so you will be downvoted", "a liberal echo chamber identical to all other social media", "this SJW cesspool", "it's ALWAYS the case in HN that any opinion that's not 100% politically correct && strictly SJW standard compliant is suppressed", "HN in turn, are left leaning, socialist Democrats", "you fucking insane sjw", "leftist filter bubbles", "left-wing propaganda", "leftist totalitarianism prevalent on HN", "anti-western and extremely anti-capitalist", "Dang is a totalitarian liberal thought policeman", "banned every single prominent right winger", "extremely left-winged", "most people on HN are liberals", "socialist hell-hole", "this site leans left", "leftist bots", "always politically left", "skews quite left", "Obviously this website is rigged for the liberal agenda", "the level of wokeness is just absurd", "leftist ideological echo chamber", "run by radical leftists, so no surprise", "You aren't allowed to go against the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party", "ideas here are ignored, down voted, flagged, shadow banned if they question the left ideology", "a very anti-libertarian echo chamber", "a heavy socialist lean, you are not allowed to have a differing perspective", "only liberals are allowed to express their political opinions on HN", "capitalism bad", "flaaaaaming, communist level liberal", "shows how much of a leftist website this is", "dang is an SJW cunt"
Links available on request. Quote quality 100% guaranteed, or your clicks back!
Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?
#8My advise to anyone here is to not dismiss downvoted comments but independently read them and form your own opinion. If it sides with the majority, great. No harm. But if it doesn't, then you can add your voice by upvoting them and expanding on their comment with your own color. I actually gravitate towards downvoted comments to see if there is some treasure, usually not but sometimes you do find interesting but awkwardly worded ideas.
History has taught us, many great ideas go against the grain... and some ideas demand going against the grain before people can realize its value.
Of course there are univerally bad comments (violence and deep contemptful hatred).
Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?
#9Not sure about getting cancelled. But I recently submitted a link containing an uncomfortable truth from Pew Research titled "U.S. has world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households". It got 30 upvotes in one hour, and quickly reached the front page. It seemed to have gotten shadowbanned by a moderator, as it disappeared to the 5th page despite its quickly gained popularity. It was not flagged, o…
Based on the number of comments (94) and upvotes (53), this may have triggered the flamewar detector. Here’s more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25584860 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25871251
If you’re curious, email hn@ and they’ll tell you what happened.
(Background: a very high ratio of comments to upvotes often means that more people want to opine than get value from the opinions. Obviously that’s not always the case, though.)
Re: Getting Cancelled on HN a Thing?
#10Let's just say there is a specific slant to the politics here and far too many people would rather down vote than refute an argument.
I've heard opposite complaints about what that slant is (I think entirely from people making their claims in good faith). And of course, both could be correct: there could be a particular mainstream and everyone whose views are outside of it in any direction might find a somewhat chilly reception.
> far too many people would rather down vote than refute an argument
Another challenge is that there's not always a consensus about what downvoting is appropriate for. (Disagreement, tone, bad faith, personal attacks, poor logic, off-topic, etc.? Or just "too controversial and not likely to lead to a good discussion, even though it might well be correct"? For that matter, people can't quite agree on what is or isn't on-topic here.)
I sometimes wish HN had downvote reason metadata so that people could understand more about what was prompting other people to downvote them. You can see that people are often genuinely confused about it, but the site rules discourage people from complaining about it, and it's hard to distinguish a confused question from a complaining question when people ask why they were downvoted. But we don't really have any challenge for people to say "I was offended by your view" vs. "I think you treated someone else in the conversation disrespectfully" vs. "I don't think HN is the right place for this argument", etc.