
Does "dead" status on HackerNews means suppression of the freedom of speech? - trtmrt
Think about it, if news are not good and no one votes they will drop anyway, and after one hour or so no one will vote for them.<p>Censorship by definition is the suppression of speech, public communication or other information.<p>But, if first user who has admin rights decided to mark something as &quot;dead&quot; basically he acts same as people in Stasi Germany, filtering the continent for &quot;greater good&quot;.<p>[Update] Additionally, why is sharing other people things considered ok but sharing your own things consider bad and banned?<p>[Update 2] I would gladly answer but I am getting message I am submitting too fast<p>Example:<p>For instance for the following account [grisanik] everything from that story [10790985], has marked as &quot;dead&quot;, it is distopian&#x2F;utopian story about two futures.<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hacker-news.firebaseio.com&#x2F;v0&#x2F;user&#x2F;grisanik.json?print=pretty<p>Why is that story considered as spam? On that site there is no adverts?<p>Tell me what is considered as on topic I just read the story about gang rape. How is that on topic with Hack news?<p>&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; Comment 
&quot;You are saying HN is not ok to say I made this what do you think about it? and then I made something else what do you think about that?&quot;
But it is ok with
U1 &quot;Elon Musk ...&quot;
U2 &quot;Elon Musk ...&quot;
U3 &quot;Elon Musk ...&quot;<p>I know that Elon Musk is awesome I do not to read about him here I can go to his official site.<p>What is that you people make? That is what interest me... But again maybe I am wrong ...
======
ctdonath
Censorship by definition is "the suppression or prohibition of any parts of
books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically
unacceptable, or a threat to security", with the clear understanding that
attempting to bypass it by publishing elsewhere will be likewise censored and
likely punished.

Routine maintaining of order & interest on a private site is NOT censorship;
you are welcome to publish your content & links elsewhere, and HN admins (and
users flagging objectionable content) will not come after you to erase such
publication or punish you for publishing it anyway.

Stasi would _kill_ you for persisting in publishing prohibited content. PG et
al won't.

~~~
trtmrt
But this is the thing, other sites have similar idea of "censorship", you
cannot post your own things. So, if people are centred on specific sites,
where can you post?

Maybe they will not kill you physically but surely they will kill your
electronic life.

Also question is following if people gather on private site are those sites
private or public?

~~~
ctdonath
Their site, their property, their business.

There are plenty of sites where you can post pretty much whatever you want. HN
likely frowns on self-promotion, as it would fast turn an informative news
site into a bunch of "look at me!" content few are interested in.

Publicly-accessible privately-owned sites are still private, just like stores
"open to the public" \- you're welcome to come in and participate as the
business sees fit, but promoting yourself (unless that's the point of the
site) is usually frowned on and not leaving when requested is punishable
trespassing.

No, they're not "killing your electronic life". Go to networksolutions.com (or
wherever), register your own domain, and publish whatever you want (a few
generally-accepted legal limitations aside, like libel or obscenity or state
secrets). Promote it thru advertising, Twitter, Facebook, etc insofar as
you're not violating their standards for objectionable/deniable content.

Freedom of the press does _not_ mean freedom to use someone else's press as
you see fit.

------
DanBC
(I'm not a mod or admin, so I'm not sure about this stuff. Perhaps I'm wrong.)

1) Hacker News has a variety of methods for marking submissions or comments as
dead. Not all of these require moderator intervention. Many submissions are
marked dead by spam filters. Or they're killed by user flags. Some comments
are caught in spam filters, or the user has been caught in a hellban. Or
sometimes users flag the comment (I think this is marked differently as
"flagged" rather than "dead").

2) Users with a small amount of karma can "Vouch" for dead items. This will
bring them back to live status, and might trigger the mods to look to see if
the account was mistakenly killed.

3) Even if the account was correctly hellbanned users could vote to un-kill
individual comments. Although abuse of the vouch feature leads to loss of the
button.

4) Can you point to anything that you think was incorrectly killed? Plenty of
stuff which is critical of HN or YCombinator or YCombinator companies is
posted and not killed. Mods have said, many times, that they do not intervene
in killing those threads.

5) YCombinator companies are held to the same community standards as everyone
else. A YCombinator company that used sock-puppets to vote up their
submissions would get banned.

6) Sharing your own things is fine. There's even a section of the site
dedicated to sharing your stuff: Show HN. And the rules ask people to engage
in constructive criticism, and avoid undue negativity. It's a problem if the
only thing you submit is from your own site. But it's a problem if a user only
submits from one site even if it's not their stuff. Some people take every
opportunity to mention their stuff in comments. "Oh hey, just wanted to say my
site EXAMPLE.COM does this, try it out, let me know what you think". Sometimes
that's okay if it's directly relevant to the parent comment. And HN is seems
to be reasonably tolerant of it. But you have to be honest ("This is my site"
is okay, "hey, have you seen this site?" is less okay) and you have to not
over do it.

But, like I say, I'm just a user so maybe I've got this all wrong.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Could you define "hellbanned" for me? I've seen that term several times, but I
don't know what it actually means.

~~~
CarolineW
Have you tried googling it? The Wikipedia entry seems to cover it pretty well.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Well, no, I didn't, because I assumed it was an HN-specific term.

To whoever downvoted CarolineW: She didn't answer my question, but she pointed
me to the answer, which I thought was good enough.

------
CarolineW
In answer to your update:

    
    
        [Update] Additionally, why is sharing other
        people things considered ok but sharing your
        own things consider bad and banned?
    

In general, it's not. Maybe the stuff you're submitting is simply not regarded
as on-topic for HN.

As I've said elsewhere, give us some examples, and we can give you some
feedback.

------
oldmanjay
I'm not involved with HN or YC in any way, I'm just a cranky old man.

Your definition of censorship ignores that you have no basic right to publish
using facilities you don't own.

Also, considering we can opt in to seeing the dead items, they aren't even
censored by your loose definition of the term, they are just inconvenient to
access.

------
krapp
If you think your submissions are being killed unfairly, there is a contact
link at the bottom of the page where you can discuss it with the staff. Be
sure to mention your actual account to them and not the one you appear to have
created just to make vague complaints.

------
CarolineW
Firstly, the faq says not to ask this kind of question here, but to email
them. Have you done that?

Secondly, many things on HN are automated, the volume of work would be too
large otherwise. Consider, you submit item after item, getting no comments and
no upvotes. I'm not surprised an automated system would mark it as probable
spam, especially since you've never commented on anything else. You have been
behaving just as a spammer would.

Which takes me back to the first point: have you asked the mods? Complaining
here just makes you look bad.

------
CarolineW
It's nothing to do with admins - it's ordinary users flagging items as not
being appropriate for HN. They might even be interesting, it's just that some
things are not on-topic.

For example - spam really doesn't belong, and should be flagged. When that
happens, the item is killed and is marked as [dead].

Do you have any specific item in mind?

~~~
trtmrt
Yes, specific thing is that if you share only own things you will be suspended
completly.

So, my additional question to this, are we unintentionally crating a
structure/trend of followers instead of leaders? By encuraging people to
follow instead to create?

~~~
minimaxir
> Yes, specific thing is that if you share only own things you will be
> suspended completly.

Er, that's spam and most websites would ban you for doing that, not just HN.

~~~
trtmrt
Are you ok with that?

Why are pepole ok with sharing other people things, but it is not ok to share
your own things?

~~~
ctdonath
There's a difference between "hey, I found something y'all might find
interesting" vs "hey, I wrote something and I'm trying to promote it".

~~~
DanBC
And HN is fine with "Hey, I made something and I'm trying to promote it".

HN is not fine with

"Hey, I made something and I'm trying to promote it".

"Hey, I made something and I'm trying to promote it".

"Hey, I made something and I'm trying to promote it".

"Hey, I made something and I'm trying to promote it".

"Hey, I made something and I'm trying to promote it".

"Hey, I made something and I'm trying to promote it".

"Hey, I made something and I'm trying to promote it".

"Hey, I made something and I'm trying to promote it".

"Hey, I made something and I'm trying to promote it".

"Hey, I made something and I'm trying to promote it".

[repeat]

------
kjs3
Freedom of speech means you are free to express your opinions. Freedom of
speech does _not_ mean a private, third party is obligated to provide you with
a forum to express your opinions. You have an almost _infinite_ opportunity to
express yourself on the internet; get over yourself.

I've been hellbanned apparently, which ever so slightly annoys me considering
it was for stuff that "cooler" posters don't have an eye batted at, but I
don't pretend HN owes me anything.

~~~
dang
> _I 've been hellbanned apparently_

No, by definition that's banning someone without telling them, and we told
you:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10545474](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10545474).

Pretty much the only accounts that we ban without telling them are brand new
ones that are spamming or trolling. If a user has any real history here, we
tell them that they're banned, and there's a standing invitation for anyone
who sincerely intends to improve their behavior on the site to email us and
get unbanned. There's also now a mechanism—as other users have explained in
this thread—for comments by banned users to get restored by the community on a
case-by-case basis.

We're thinking of abolishing shadow-banning altogether and making a big
announcement that we've done so, because there's still a lot of
misunderstanding around this, and we barely do it anyway. But I don't like to
make any big change without first letting it simmer a long time. It's
simmering.

