
Ask HN: Why does HN censor content? - pcarolan
I recently submitted a link to HN:<p><pre><code>    Seattle Workers Pay for the Minimum Wage (wsj.com)
</code></pre>
It was from a reputable source, the WSJ, and the study it references was conducted by the University of Washington. 
The article was upvoted quite a few times but then flagged and locked for comments. 
Can someone tell me the reasoning behind HN censoring this article?
======
detaro
[Flagged] is done by user flags, and while I of course can't know why other
users flagged something, here are possible reasons:

a) WSJ has a paywall where the Google workaround often doesn't work

b) political topics always are at risk, especially if repeated:

c) That there have been 5 submissions with together >300 comments on that
topic in the last week:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=seattle+Minimum+Wage&sort=byDa...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=seattle+Minimum+Wage&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)
, which seem to discuss the same study, making your submission clearly a
duplicate (at least from what I can see from the text teaser, thanks to a) I
can't actually read the full content)

~~~
pcarolan
Thanks,

a) doesn't seem like it should matter, that's the way the web is going. b) i
saw this article as more scientific than political. This is the closest thing
you get to a controlled experiment in economics research. c) Fair. I didn't
catch that this had been posted. I did a simple search with the 'past' link
and didn't find anything.It seems like a flagging should require a rationale
from the flagger.

~~~
detaro
For a _link aggregator_ , where people discuss the content of links, of course
it matters if people can actually read the content of the submission! The mods
previously have stated that easy workarounds like google search are tolerated,
but that fails with WSJ and I know that not all users agree on that.

~~~
pcarolan
I agree with you in principle, but in practice you'd need to exclude all the
major outlets. That's a pretty big hole in media coverage.

In either case, flagging the post with a reason would be an educational
benefit to the poster and the readers.

~~~
detaro
> _I agree with you in principle, but in practice you 'd need to exclude all
> the major outlets. That's a pretty big hole in media coverage._

WSJ is (as far as I know) the only major one that doesn't meet the "easy to
circumvent" rule. And the "major outlets" predominantly post general news,
which is less relevant to HN.

------
DanBC
[flagged] means users flagged it.

Some people have started flagging anything from WSJ because of the paywall.

This topic has been previously discussed on HN.

------
pcarolan
So this doesn't come off as pithy, I'd like to explain that the reason I
submitted this article to HN is that 1) a lot of startups hire minimum wage
workers and will be affected by these policies and 2) I wanted to get the HN
crowd's $.02 on the debate. It is clearly not clear cut as to the general or
specific effects implementing a minimum wage would have, but I was hoping the
debate would bring out the nuance. This seemed like a good study with findings
contradictory to my original theory of what would happen, in other words a
good scientific debate.

~~~
krono
I always flag these types of posts because I'm so done with US specific
political posts

------
RickJWag
IMHO, Hacker News does not do enough censoring.

I'd like HN to be about programming issues. I'd love that. Instead, too often
it's about news issues with some political angle, seldom to do with
programming.

Enough of that and I'll pull it from my RSS reader. I can find my own
political content easily enough, I don't need it everywhere.

------
ximeng
Would be helpful for transparency if it was possible to see a list of flagged
articles somewhere.

~~~
detaro
You can at least turn on "showdead" in your profile, which doesn't give you
one handy list of everything flagged, but flagged (and otherwise killed)
submissions and comments are then still visible to you.

------
scarface74
I flag anything from WSJ because of the paywall that can't easily be worked
around.

Besides that, this topic has been discussed as nauseum on HN.

------
lxrbst
paywall?

------
rhapsodic
It's anyone's guess. My guess, based on what I've seen, is that things that
stories that serve to debunk left-wing shibboleths are hammered with flags.
And then either a moderator or built-in rules kill the submission.

~~~
franciscop
From what I've seen in HN and IMHO, a well expressed opinion on both sides is
welcome. If you do have something to add on the other side of a topic those
are way better on a comment. Then a civilized discussion happens many times.
That is one of the great things of HN!

However, any article/comment insulting anyone or any political opinion has its
well deserved downvotes. I would expect that on both left-wing and right-wing
opinions. I've downvoted comments I agree with and upvoted comments I disagree
with, based solely on the respect shown and the quality of them.

Note: there are of course always exceptions, my description above is when
comparing HN to the rest of the web

------
swampthinker
There was an article that Reid Hoffman wrote about supporting women in VC that
was flagged. It was incredibly irritating.

------
anonymousiam
I noticed that article disappear just as I tried to promote it. HN moderators
have previously expressed support for universal income so it's probably a case
of reality interfering with their world view. Thus they deny reality to
maintain their world view.

~~~
anonymousiam
[https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2017/07/03/busted-
em...](https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2017/07/03/busted-emails-show-
seattle-mayor-worked-with-berkeley-to-preempt-study-criticizi-n2348804)

