HN allows everyone with sufficient karma to vouch for dead comments (or flag comments), I suspect most of the comment-level moderation you see is crowdsourced to fellow commenters; a still-dead comment means most of those who see choose to keep it dead.
HN is awesome because of the rules and moderation (including bans); any unmoderated forum devolves into a cesspit; and it only takes a surprisingly few bad apples to ruin a community.
I wonder if something like Slashdot's metamoderation system could be used to tamp down such abuse.
One problem with metamoderation is that once a particular forum becomes an echo chamber, even metamoderation will unconsciously but repeatably ignore "valid" information from the other side and amplify misinformation from their own side. But if the site owners specifically searched for good-faith users from multiple viewpoints to serve as the jury pool for metamoderation, this could be workable.
There was some post about Israel the other day (might have been Google's relationship to Israel or something) where every comment about the war starting last year was highly visible, while every comment about what happened prior to last year was dead.
I'd be careful about generalizing from one case, or even from all the cases you've seen, because people (all of us) tend to notice and put much greater weight on the posts we dislike. (Basically the same mechanism by which painful memories tend to be deeper than pleasurable ones.)
Those contentious threads never last long here for that reason. Reddit is 90% those sorts of heavily moderated comment threads where everyone agrees with each other and those who don't align get removed or downvoted. People can always just go there.
The HN crowd like reddit leans massively progressive/democratic. As such any thinking outside normal or contrarian views are massively suppressed.
Classic contrarian (to HN) around WFH, Capitalism, Elon Musk, Tesla, Regulation is downvoted and even flagged
The HN crowd is far right but they would never admit it. Most people are unaware of how political parties shift in composition and ideology over the decades.
The contemporary American software engineer resembles the professional class Reagan Republicans who dominated the suburbs in the 80's and 90's.
Center-right, I'd argue, but that's true of the Democratic party. HN is very far from far-right in that bigotry and racism isn't tolerated here (nor should they be). But HN is USA in origin and USA politics are further right than most of Europe.
Moderators don't tolerate bigotry and racism on HN. I agree with that. But there were quite a few comments yesterday discussing Fyodor Dostoevsky who implied it was impossible for Russia to produce culture because it's people are monsters or something. Extreme ethnic hatred. So the users within the software community share many of the same faults regarding bigotry that the rest of humanity has.
Same goes for commentary on Chinese people or Palestinians, though nowhere near as extreme in animosity as that towards the Russian.
If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, that by no means implies that the post is ok or somehow blessed by the mods. The likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it*. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here.
You can help by flagging such a post or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com. It was only because someone brought those unacceptable comments to my attention that I was able to respond. We can't moderate what we don't see!
The general problem with "racism" online is that people tend to use the word for things that they don't like hearing. E.g. there is an issue of some sort, let's say unemployment caused by subsidized temporary foreign workers being brought in to act as wage suppression for corporations. Saying that you have a concern with policy can often result in a response of "that's racist!".
This is a variation of the little boy who cried wolf. If "racism!" is cried for every single little thing that needs discussion, then one day it actually is racism and nobody will be listening.
Very few people ever complain about this in an egalitarian way, though, like: if wages are too low, let's make them higher. If the market isn't doing what we want, we should change the market.
Instead, it's always about how the immigrants should be locked up or deported. And that's always about immigrants from Mexico, never from Canada or other places.
If you're a legal resident of the country yes, but now the California Senate has passed the bill allowing undocumented illegals to be eligible for a state-backed loan of $150,000 for them to purchase housing in California.
Congratulations to the California taxpayers who are now subsidizing people who walked across the border without paperwork.
Sure nobody says slurs. But I see misogyny and what I would classify as racist every time I'm on hackernews.
Complaining about Indians, complaining about women. But they don't even know that's what they're doing so you can't say "hey stop being sexist". They're surrounded by men all the time, of course it will never click in their heads.
Because orthodoxy blinds the masses, the people upvoting this are the very far-right who LARP as leftists/liberals I'm referring to lol. The detractors are actually liberals who have been painted as far right. Ideology is such a powerful delusion. Nobody can be sure of who they are due to external labeling.
I hadn't read about this concept - it's interesting.
It was really heart breaking coming up in the hacker culture of the late 80s through the 90s, then seeing the potential of "Don't be evil" Google, when it became clearer and clearer that no, hackers hadn't penetrated the capitalist class it was more the other way round. The only "disruption" was a set of new levers for the bankers, handed over freely by people eager to join them.
"Far right" as measured by a hardcore leftie, maybe. If you stand against illegal immigration, criticize superficial DEI "me-too" gestures that do nothing to solve the real issues underneath, or are moderately conservative in any other way, you will have you comments routinely downvoted into oblivion and will be called a Nazi and the second coming of Hitler. Not only in this place, it has become the the norm these days.
I find that HN is generally receptive of criticisms of those things granted you're using enough tact in your post and not just going "I'M SICK OF THESE WOKE JEWISH LEFTISTS RUINING EVERYTHING" in which case go to 4chan and cry there.
Illegal immigration is a far right wing policy goal. It's how mega corps keep wages down. The old "we need illegal immigrants because who else is going to pick lettuce for $1 an hour!" When the answer is well without illegal immigration you'd be forced to pay a legally protected citizen a fair wage.
I think you're looking at the DEI phenomena incorrectly. It's a way for the economically comfortable class to signal virtue without having to experience any of its detractors. Check the Wikis of many DEI proponents and writers. They live in both highly segregated economic and racial neighborhoods.
They live a 1950's far right wing lifestyle at home but wax poetic about DEI for the virtue.
This observation is always highlighted by the absurdity of american politics when they describe candidates like Joe Biden as "far left" when on the european political spectrum (or even an absolute one, if such a thing exists) he'd almost certainly be on the right.
>This observation is always highlighted by the absurdity of american politics when they describe candidates like Joe Biden as "far left"
Joe Biden is by all accounts, center-left. However, the parent comment also describes the "HN crowd" as far-right. What probably is actually happening is that America is extremely polarized, where any side you don't agree with has the "far-[left/right]" label slapped on.
Not trying to start a political discussion but people describing someone like biden as center-left are usually basing this off the policies people of his particular political flavor say they want. What they end up doing is usually very much right-aligned.
No need to involve whatever "political flavor" of people making the judgement. If you compare his views to other politicians, or the electorate as a whole, he's clearly a centrist.
I don’t think that’s clear at all, and I’m not involving the political flavor of people making a “judgment” - I’m saying his particular brand of establishment democrat politics all tend to have the same tendency.
In Canada and most of Europe, Joe Biden would be a hair right of centre-right on most things and centre-right on a few other topics. Only in America is he centre-left, which says a lot about America's Overton window shift.
Biden sounds a lot like Stephen Harper (pre-barbaric-practices-hotline) and just to the right of Brian Mulroney. Joe Clark would be well to his left.
Comparing political rights, lefts and centers across cultures is futile, it's apples and oranges. For example, compare the immigration and integration policies of Biden [or the US] to that of Europe, and you'll find that he and most democrats are, for the most part, further "left."
Looking at the past 10-20 years, how are the immigration policies of the US or the Biden administration [1] further left than France, Germany or the UK - even under a conservative government post-Brexit? The US does have jus soli but I don't consider that to be a left wing thing.
1. Biden was promoting - and willing to sign into law - a border bill written by a Republican; it very nearly passed as it initially had bipartisan support before being scuppered by a presidential candidate.
I disagree with your characterization of why I called the HN crowd, or technology professionals, far right. Having read my God how many comments, articles, tweets etc over the years. I see extremely conservative policy positions. No better example than asking a software engineer, developer VC there opinions on whether "gig" workers should be treated as full time employees with benefits, unionization etc.
The former use technology to do things economically to workers we haven't seen since Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Like preventing a driver from getting new deliveries if those 10 minutes put him over 1 hour of work. It's robber barron extreme right wing economic policy.
>No better example than asking a software engineer, developer VC there opinions on whether "gig" workers should be treated as full time employees with benefits, unionization etc.
And that's a "far right" position? So far as I can tell, even in europe, in most jurisdictions gig workers are treated as contractors rather than employees.
I mean these meanings aren't concrete. Left vs right etc. But historically it was a far right wing position to find ways to exploit labor for profit. The tech industry uses their skill set to accomplish this with algorithms.
>But historically it was a far right wing position to find ways to exploit labor for profit
and historically LGBT rights were far left positions. That doesn't mean they're far left positions today. Moreover if being pro-capital (as opposed to being labor) is "far right", then is being pro-labor "far left"? Is there even a "centrist" or non "far-left/right" position?
Can you give a historical example of such far right stance? Hitler's national socialist and Mussolini's fascist which are historically considered far right certainly didn't have such policies.
The HN crowd is far left but they would never admit it.
Go watch Bill Clinton talk about illegal immigration and border security in the 90s. He'd be considered far right today. Read a book or newspaper from 50 years ago or 100 years ago and look at how much more freedom people had to build homes and businesses without a thousand licenses, permits, taxes and inspections.
There was a time in America where the notion of an income tax or of restrictions on running a business out of your home were considered far-left authoritarian and unconstitutional, but now we've all gotten used to a million regulations on how we use our private property, the government surveilling our communications and finances, government oversight and permission required for all activities.
Admittedly "left vs right" is hardly useful in contemporary politics, things are so multi-faceted and people's notions of what those terms mean is variable. But nonetheless, it's obvious that "the center" of American politics today is drastically far to the left from where it was previously.
In some sense, the 1960s counter-culture liberal progressives "won" and became the center and the establishment. A leftwing extremist in 1968 on issues of feminism, race, social welfare, tax policy, foreign policy, housing policy and probably others is a centrist today.
Environmental issues and unions are the only two areas I can think of where America has stayed the same or moved right since WWII.
The US is the most right-leaning country out of the first world.
> but now we've all gotten used to a million regulations on how we use our private property
Many of these originating from the right. Because the right is not, and has never been, a party of small government. They want big government, just their big government. That has meant historically enforcing slavery, then segregation, suppressing women's rights, suppressing abortion, dictating what you can do in the bedroom, and on and on and on. These are all conservative policy - and all HUGE government.
> it's obvious that "the center" of American politics today is drastically far to the left from where it was previously
Yes, this is called the progression of time. This is why people who are unable to change their mind over time end up falling behind and sounding crazy.
Have you ever asked an old dude about how they feel about black people? Whoa! Clearly they grew up in a different time. Some let that shit go like they should, some don't. Those that don't are destined to be left to the past.
Just a few decades ago a slight right winger might be anti-integration. Slight. A far right-winger would be lynching people in their neighborhood. So you're correct - we've moved past that.
And, in 40 years, if I personally don't change my beliefs, I will also sound crazy. To conservatives that's scary or something. To me, that's how the world works. I say either adapt or be relegated to the insane.
I think you have it backwards. Open borders are a right-wing goal. See Bernie Sanders comments on the subject circa 2015. How the Koch brothers want open borders to weaken labors leverage.
The wealthy and powerful don't benefit from citizenship. When you have wealth you can just pay for what you need or want. It's the common person who needs the benefits and protections that come from citizenship.
You're on the right path, pointing out how counter-culture liberals won but they are in fact right-wing. They LARP as liberals/leftists.
HN crowd is democrat but not progressive. Reddit crowd is progressive
Also HN doesn't censor as much, libertarian-right posters that would've gotten downvoted to hell on reddit actually have an outlet here. Religious right has no outlet on either site
A long while ago I read an article predicting the downfall of all unpaid internet moderation because it would attract the type of person who both has copious free time and enjoys having power over others.
Reddit during covid showed us just how true that was. Moderation was so ridiculous you'd get banned from subreddits for posts which were the same as the CDC's advice at the time they were made.
HN has largely avoided that because it has at least partly paid moderators. The worst parts are the mass flaggings which I think are still a mistake. Not least because they now hilariously happen to every one of PG's posts.
Sometimes, the actual mods in charge of the site have heavily penalized certain accounts, either manually or via an algorithm (I don't know the details). The comments posted by these accounts appear to start off "dead", though they may be vouched for by high-karma users. This will make those comments appear normally.
I've moderated a number of forums in my time. And the hardest users to deal with are the ones that insist on breaking the rules 10% of the time, and who refuse to stop. Even if they contribute positively much of the rest of the time, they create far too much work.
(Also, I have zero interest in participating in unmoderated forums. Unmoderated forums are either overrun by spam, or by users who somehow manage to spend 50 hours a week flaming people. Look at any small-town online newspaper where the same 5 people bicker endlessly after every single news story. And if I don't like how a forum is moderated, I find another one.)
> And the hardest users to deal with are the ones that insist on breaking the rules 10% of the time, and who refuse to stop. Even if they contribute positively much of the rest of the time, they create far too much work.
There is _always_ a technical solution here. If you can't figure it out, keep thinking. There's never a reason to ban/moderate your core users for 10% rule violations. Instead, that shows a weakness of the software. More transparency helps.
> .. and this is the sort of hostility one attracts whenever one asks for transparency: the mask drops and the fangs come out.
Let me get this straight: you asking me to rationalize other people's actions is "transparency", but my asking you to explain your (in)action is hostility? It doesn't sound like you are contributing in good faith. Have a great day.
It's been my experience that people complaining about community moderation are never arguing in good faith.
The bad actors have gotten incredibly adept at dragging a forum down into hell. Either they turn a group into one that serves their ideology, or they make the group unusable for its original members.
Increasingly so. There's a terrible, almost schizophrenic feeling that comes with having to wonder if the person you are talking to is real. It seems obviously the case on some platforms and scary to wonder about on platforms like this and Reddit.
"Good" as in ~fun to think about" (I agree!), or more like "is an accurate description of what is going on here with my comment" (in this case at least, that would be inaccurate)?
What is happening in this thread is rather interesting though, don't you think? And this same sort of thing is happening all over the world right now, as we speak, nudging humanity toward who knows what kind of suboptimal, undesired outcomes.
> However, look at the dead comments here and, for each, tell us why it would turn HN into a "cesspit."
This is an impossible task and you know it. Asking your opponents to enumerate every dead comment on a thread with hundreds of comments is not approaching the issue in good faith.
Looking at a selection of dead comments on this thread, I see flame-baiting on israel/palestine, flame-baiting on trans and racial issues, assorted comments whose content might have been acceptable if it wasn't 40% profanity by wordcount, a bunch of unnecessary personal attacks, and assorted people redefining words and then asserting that only their new definition is the correct one.
I see basically nothing that would improve HN if it were not dead. I see a lot that would make HN actively worse if it were not dead.
> This is an impossible task and you know it. Asking your opponents to enumerate every dead comment on a thread with hundreds of comments is not approaching the issue in good faith.
No, it's not impossible. I count 15 dead now, not "hundreds" (when I said that originally, it was about 5).
Let's make it easy: why does bigbacaloa's go, and all the others stay?
I was prepared to disagree, but actually I don't see what the problem is with that post.
Here it is, so others don't have to dig around for it. It appears to have been a top level comment.
"This pseudo-apology is the worst sort of political expediency. He did what the government asked while denying doing it, now apologizes for it to curry favor with the rightwing world he alienated. It's like the NY Times pushing the weapons of mass destruction narrative during the Iraq war and later running long articles about what bad journalism that was."
Another point of evidence of why HN is great. Even reading this point in this argument had me thinking and wondering why it was banned and then the moderator comment right below (but can't be replied to?) explains the reasoning.
One of the best uses of HN for me is watching my brain jump to conclusions only to have them slapped down by a well thought out counter argument.
This forum isn't perfect but I haven't found a better public discussion board on the internet. Hat tip to the moderators and others making this happen. Your work is appreciated.
Look at the posting history of the comment posters, not just the comment.
In many cases it's not the particular comment, it's the particular poster who is shadow-banned, and all of their comments are dead on arrival (to everyone but themselves, the definition of shadow banned). But people with showdead=true and enough karma can vouch for them to resurrect them if they're worthwhile.
Broken windows theory: actively moderating is precisely what keeps shit posters away. There's no gain from doing it when their posts are removed so they give up quickly.
I'm sure we can pick and choose good/bad examples from every thread, but I for one definitely feel the bar for civility/respect here is way higher than virtually anywhere else, so I'm choosing to believe this current system contributes to that and that the pros outweigh the cons.
After reddit's nonsense last summer I appreciate HN more than ever. If it means the moderation is a bit "too strict" then so be it. That was also the case on some of reddit's (and other sites') best communities. /r/AskHistorians immediately comes to mind.
Either it's from someone who happily continues to break rules and is effectively shadow banned because they continue to cause problems and break rules, or the comment doesn't contribute well enough to the topic. This could mean it's just being insulting, or off-topic.
In short: Nothing of value was lost. Especially since you can toggle it on.
HN is awesome because of the rules and moderation (including bans); any unmoderated forum devolves into a cesspit; and it only takes a surprisingly few bad apples to ruin a community.