
Dang is a terrible moderator who engages in ideological censorship - bonetopick
I&#x27;m sorry, but after trying yet again to contribute and yet again being slapped around I&#x27;ve finally had it.<p>Dang, you are the single worst moderator I&#x27;ve ever had the displeasure of having to deal with. You regularly ban, throttle, shadowban, and otherwise censor used for purely ideological reasons while claiming that their posts are &quot;unsubstantive&quot;. The entire structure of HN does inevitably lead to an echo chamber of people who are at times incredibly lacking in self awareness, but your actions only exacerbate this problem.<p>Anyway, this post is giong to be downvoted, flagged, and probably deleted with the account banned and maybe a weak redirection to an email account. God forbid we discuss the state of the site and moderation publicly.
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dang
Why don't you supply links so readers can make up their own minds?

It sucks to get moderated, and often feels like the mods are doing it because
they disagree with you. Whatever your ideology is, though, I guarantee you
there are users on the other side complaining that yours is the one we
secretly agree with and theirs is the one we're censoring.

~~~
ReggieJJJ
I think you may be underestimating this issue. It is leading to one of the
most heinous and vile things someone can do on an internet forum, shadow
banning, akin to putting them in an isolation cell; only worse worse,
basically transporting them there without even letting them know they are/were
put there and users keep commenting and contributing while being essentially
locked away and lost in an authoritarian prison cell where no one can hear
them. It's downright sick and depraved and one of the worst practices of the
tech sector today for which there is zero justification regardless of what
unapproved things were said.

There is a real sickness on the net today where "moderators" have come to
think of themselves as the thought police, but even worse, not just thought
police of an authoritarian regime, but a kind of self-anointed little dictator
that rules over the user rabble at will and upon whim.

If you want to silence people, at least have the spine of any other run of the
mill authoritarian and tell users their fundamental human right to speech and
expression was taken from them … don't just silently transport them to digital
purgatory. Again, it is a vile act that only the most depraved people would
excuse, let alone endorse, no matter what unapproved things were thought and
said … which are only words/characters on a screen that can be dismissed and
ignored.

Ok, I've said my peace. It's a sick and depraved practice and I cannot stand
by just not say something when the topic comes up while digital regimes like
HN, reddit have, what are essentially digital version of hellish totalitarian
regime isolation cells that "mods" disappear people/accounts to.

~~~
dang
We don't typically shadowban accounts that have much history on HN; we tell
them we're banning them:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20banned&sort=byDate&type=comment).

We shadowban spam accounts and new accounts that are egregiously and/or
repeatedly breaking the site guidelines, especially if they show evidence of
being serial trolls. That's a fundamentally different case—there are many
users who simply create new accounts as we ban their older accounts and carry
on posting as before. It isn't a good use of resources to patiently coax them
to improve or even to reply to their posts at all. These users know perfectly
well when we've banned them; it's a cat and mouse game and not at all an
"isolation cell".

It's certainly true that there are a few good-faith users who get shadowbanned
because we mistook them for bad-faith users—people who didn't realize that
they were breaking the site guidelines and could have reformed if we had
explained and asked them. But there are orders of magnitude fewer of these
than your comment implies. I'd prefer that there not be even one such lost
lamb, but it's just a hard problem to solve. Software can't distinguish these
and moderators can't read intent correctly in every case.

~~~
ReggieJJJ
And yet, here you are, validating the very criticism of your heavy handed
authoritarian nature. You make the very same kind of authoritarian claims of
"evidence" (where is it, show it and provided it for public scrutiny and audit
then) and you weigh that "evidence" against arbitrary (yet comically inline
with your own self-interest) measure against ambiguous rules. It's the
authoritarians' playbook 101, regardless of whether the authoritarians are
competent enough to recognize it, let alone self-are enough. (pro tip: you
guys never are … never)

Just try to reflect on the authoritarian and supremacist mentality you have
with language like "It isn't a good use of resources to patiently coax them to
improve or even to reply to their posts at all"; yet your expend resources to
censor and control and rule with an iron fist anything that is not to our
liking.

No one is talking about obvious spam or any kind of illegal language like
credible threats of violence or stalking or bulling, but if you were at least
honest with yourself you would acknowledge that it has nothing at all to do
with "good use of resource" and all to do with control. Because it is
irrefutably true that if it were about "good use of resources" you would
wholeheartedly avoid censorship of legal language and not violate what what
has been deemed a human right, free speech.

You types, people with the authoritarian supremacist mentality you clearly
have, are always quite to rationalize why it is fine that you be the arbiter
of right and wrongthink, but it never avails you of the inherent evil
exhibited by controlling speech and expression, no matter how much beneath you
or inferior and unworthy you decree that speech to be.

~~~
dang
You're arguing for a style of moderation that has never applied on HN, because
this isn't that kind of site. Rather than complaining about that here, it
would be in your interests to find a different forum that is more aligned with
the kind of moderation you want to see.

There's room for lots of different kinds of internet forum. It's good for
different sites to make different choices about how they operate—that gives
users get a richer set of communities to choose from. The thing to realize,
though, is that there are tradeoffs. For example, you can't both have a site
that's dedicated to intellectual curiosity and allow aggressive comments and
flamewars. If you try, the flames will burn out the curiosity. That has
significant consequences for moderation on a site like HN, where curiosity is
the core value. In order to preserve HN for its intended purpose, we have to
respect that reality.

It isn't "authoritarian supremacist mentality", or any of the other things you
describe, to want to maintain a particular kind of internet forum. If your job
was to maintain a public garden, you wouldn't allow drag racing in the flower
beds.

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DoreenMichele
_The entire structure of HN does inevitably lead to an echo chamber_

Group dynamics always and consistently create situations where "popular" views
are much easier to express. This is not _caused_ by moderation and not unique
to HN. In fact, good moderation should give some pushback against such which
makes it less awful to participate in good faith while disagreeing with the
majority view.

My first-hand personal experience is that HN is generally better than most
forums about allowing for and supporting disagreement with the popular views
on the site, so long as you follow the rules concerning civility and the like.

I find group dynamics fascinating. It's unfortunate that moderation of online
forums is one of the best real world "labs" for such an interest. It
inevitably gets interpreted as me sucking up to the mods here rather than me
simply finding the topic interesting and desiring to participate in the
discussion in good faith.

I keep trying to find other outlets, but they tend to fail to satisfy.

------
ThrowawayR2
Personally, I like the moderation here. It strikes the difficult balance
between allowing discussion of sensitive topics while preventing the forum
equivalent of descending into all-out verbal Armageddon about as well as any
humans possibly could.

Bending to whatever ideology bonetopick wants to push, be it right, left or
otherwise, would probably get equally angry posts from others so I encourage
the moderators to give this post the minimal attention it deserves.

~~~
dang
We tend to leave posts like the OP up. This one was killed by a software
filter as well as heavily flagged by users, but I turned all of that off. That
way we don't get accused of killing it for sinister reasons, but also the
occasional thread like this can act as a pressure valve to air grievances and
give us a read on how the community is feeling. My sense is that the bulk of
the community does not share the feeling that moderation here is so biased or
vindictive. But if that's wrong, we definitely need to know.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
The only thing worse than moderators is the sites with no moderation. I've
been watching a site I liked turn into a venting ground for mentally ill
people, trolls, and people with a strange, obsessive hatred of one particular
person and everything he does. It's rather unpleasant.

So thanks for all you do. You get lots of complaints (nobody likes being on
the receiving end of what you do), but the site is _far_ better because of
you.

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SamReidHughes
Please point out the first substantive parent comment you see at
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=author%3Adang%20unsubstantive&sort=byDate&type=comment)

~~~
OJFord
Edit: Nevermind, I misunderstood parent comment completely.

\---

What's your point? The search term is ensuring you only find moderation-hat
comments, and _of course_ they're not going to be contributing with substance
of their own to the topic being discussed.

~~~
yorwba
"substantive parent comment" for that search, i.e. a comment that dang called
unsubstantive but that is actually substantive. If such a comment existed, it
would lend credence to the accusation that dang was wrongly calling it out for
purely ideological reasons.

~~~
OJFord
Oh I see, sorry!

I thought you were saying 'look at all these comments of dang's, calling out
other people, but not a single one of them is subtantive itself'.

------
aguilar
I've been reading top HN posts for a few years now and recently started
reading a little more of the comments. My personal impressions are that here
we have a good and precise moderation. What makes me think this way is that I
mostly remember reading deep, reasonable, authentic and specific comments and
discussion, even in long lists of comments - different from some other forums
/ channels where it might be more common to see hateful, toxic comments. Is it
a good moderation or the public here is more polite? Or both, maybe? What I
see in this post here is a lot of offensive accusations and supposed
constatation, without examples, evidence or even a narrative of facts that led
to this rage and indignation... In my perception a clear example of post that
is not useful, not following the guideline and doesn't promote any improve. I
feel sorry you feel this way about the moderation here, but I suggest you
deeply analyse yourself first.

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yesenadam
You provide no evidence at all. Like a single link to what you're talking
about. (Why is that?)

You say you've had it, yet here you are still.

There seems quite a lot of discussion of the "state of the site and
moderation" on here, but you act like it's forbidden or something.

------
masonic
We apologize for the fault in the moderation. Those responsible have been
sacked.

------
aww_dang
I rarely agree with his stance in regards to political moderation.

On the other hand I don't envy his position. It is easy to be critical, but
harder to put yourself in his shoes and suggest improvements.

Overall I think he wants to moderate for the most sensitive users of a
particular persuasion. I view HN as a product of Silicon Valley's culture.

The end result is that I self censor when I disagree with what I perceive as a
the prevailing view on HN.

Take it or leave it. Discussing political views online isn't an especially
fruitful use of my time.

Occasionally there are a few interesting articles. If I need a diversion I
focus on the ones I'd like to read. Commenting is rarely worth it in my view.

~~~
danbolt
What do you find you self-censor the most on? Perhaps not going in-depth, but
I'd be curious on what you notice you feel isn't a good fit for the site.

~~~
aww_dang
Off the top of my head, Climate change, China, Hofstede, the primacy of the
state and bicycling oddly enough.

The first one I won't touch anywhere online. China has too many wumaos.
There's very little room to question the role of the state without things
devolving rapidly.

As it concerns cycling, suggesting that people can get out there as self-
starters without the need for designated lanes had me warned for being
impolite? Not sure how much gentler I could have said it.

I few comments later someone else was suggesting that I was an outlier as a
former bike messenger and that most couriers are run-over so my opinion isn't
valid. Somehow this one passed by the moderation team.

I get that the moderators can't be everywhere at once. Not here for Internet
points. I want to be polite with everyone. But I view the pedantic wrist slaps
as falling on one side and ignoring the other.

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agumonkey
odd how different people have wildly different experiences on the same website

