
Tell HN: I'm worried that certain posts are made and deleted to hide news - tareqak
This post might be a paranoid reaction on my behalf, but I&#x27;ve run into this issue twice in three weeks. In both cases, the news portrayed was negative for someone (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=19165839 , https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=19004568). I totally understand flagging a post because you believe it doesn&#x27;t have a place on HN, or deleting your own post for the same reason. However, the latter approach makes it markedly more difficult for someone else who thinks differently about the post to make it on their own, and can therefore be used to willfully prevent discussion.<p>Again, my reaction could just be interpreting malice where there is none. However, please do not take away the privilege to agree to disagree with each other from topics of conversation where we are still able to act with civility with one another.
======
gus_massa
It's a bad idea to delete your own post. If you do too much times the mods may
ban your account. Delete the post only when you made a (big) mistake.

\-- About
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19004568](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19004568)
" _Undercover agents target cybersecurity watchdog Citizen Lab_ "

See
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=undercover%20apnews&sort=byPop...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=undercover%20apnews&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

It was submitted three times before your submission. That's probably the
reason the dupe detector blocked it. Anyway, it was resubmitted again two
times after you submission and one got 463 points and 172 comments
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19131729](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19131729)

I don't see nothing shady there

\-- About
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19165839](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19165839)
" _Facebook 's security team tracks posts, location for 'BOLO' threat list_"

I don't understand what problem you had when you tried to submit it. It looks
like a normal post that didn't get traction.

~~~
tareqak
> \-- About
> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19004568](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19004568)
> "Undercover agents target cybersecurity watchdog Citizen Lab"

My experience with the duplicate detector is that it takes you to the
duplicate. It didn't that time, and I got an error message. When I tried
looking up the URL on hn.algolia.com at the time, I didn't find it (I just
copy and paste the full URL).

> \-- About
> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19165839](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19165839)
> "Facebook's security team tracks posts, location for 'BOLO' threat list"

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/14/facebooks-security-team-
trac...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/14/facebooks-security-team-tracks-posts-
location-for-bolo-threat-list.html) is the original URL that didn't work for
(note the 'www' subdomain).

It's possible that hn.algolia.com can be slow at times and I'm interpreting
that delay combined with the error message as something fishy. Thank you for
the reply `gus_massa .

~~~
gus_massa
About the first one: I had to tweak the search for a while until I got a
meaningful set of results. Sometimes it's no easy.

------
wmf
HN _loves_ bashing Facebook and the Citizen Lab story did get some discussion
on the front page. I think HN has so many problems with discoverability in
general and this particular subproblem (if it exists) is not even the biggest
one. BTW, you can add something like ?please_give_me_a_second_chance to URLs
to bypass dupe detection, but if you abuse it then other factors may kick in.

------
LinuxBender
You can go into your settings and enable "showdead" to at least see if
something was indeed marked for review.

~~~
tareqak
Thanks. I have that on already. Usually, trying to submit a story that's
already been submitted takes you to the already submitted one, but when the
story is deleted by submitter, you just get a message.

