Its not automatic due to bot activity. It is from people actively suppressing stories that don't want other people to see.
This is discernible by watching how long it takes stories like these to reach a flagged state on the new submissions page. It is further evident by watching which comments within those submissions get flagged based upon their upvotes and visibility.
Indeed, and try suggesting there should be minimal accountability for flagging[0] and you'll likewise be flagged. Sure maybe the data says there's not some cartel flagging conspiracy but it starts to seem awful suspicious that even reasonable discussion of this misfeature gets flagged.
You're attributing a whole lot of agency to things that might have different factors.
I can't downvote becuase though I've read HN since 2007ish, this is a new account. I would, however, probably downvote threads like this becuase out of all 600 comments, I don't think very many people have learned anything and a lot of blatantly false and sometimes racist stuff has been shared by people of every persuasion. I don't think these discussions are productive at all, but it makes people feel good because they're "fighting" for a cause, but they're still just a rate in a cage.
Is the cause of Gaza or Israel bettered by this comment section?
These discussions are absolutely necessary because it’s the best we have to stay informed. If accuracy and credibility were more important we would have foreign journalists there on the ground providing factual information.
> Is the cause of Gaza or Israel bettered by this comment section?
Absolutely the cause of Gaza has been bettered by the thousands of comment sections. Again, the US wouldn't have bought TikTok if it didn't.
r/thedonald boosted the cause of Trumpism, posters on X have boosted the cause of extreme right wing nationalism in Europe. Discourse matters, that's why so many try to influence it. Reputation with the masses matters, that's why countries like KSA spend hundreds of billions on trying to shore it up.
You always have plenty of excuses when you get called out. Looking the other way while bot armies mass downvote pro Palestine / anti ICE / anti PayPal mafia content is complicity. I’m sure you have the data to suss out what is obvious to anyone watching these threads in real time.
Think about what you are saying for a moment. Why would "bot armies" come to Hacker News of all places to flag pro-Palestine articles? Don't you think it's a much more reasonable conclusion that people read the site guidelines[1], which clearly say that political posts are off-topic, and then flagged for that reason instead?
There are a million places to discuss politics online. If I wanted to discuss politics, I would go to any one of them. Claiming any HN moderator is 'complicit' in atrocities is absurd.
In 2026 I don't for one second think it organized inauthentic activity is implausible. I think in fact it's probably pretty extensive these days, though I'm not especially sure about penetration of HN in particular. But everything from marketing to state actors to organized political actors to anarchic but politically motivated online groups are mobilized to influence online forums and I think these phenomena are reasonably well characterized by academic research. It can also be people who aren't organized but abuse flagging out of political commitments.
I also don't think your read of it as an organic outcome of a post that obviously violates guidelines is the natural conclusion here, I actually think that interpretation strains credulity more. Where I agree is that I don't think moderators are being heavy-handed on issues like this, but I do think high level political events do merit attention at least once in a while and I don't think the HN pattern has been toward oversaturation.
And in terms of things that make this story unique, I think it's the highest standard of specificity I've ever seen in reporting of this kind, it's using impressive technological reconstruction of the scene, it's actually quite unlike typical news reporting on the topic and it's hosted on a platform that was YC-incubated, and I think DropSite News is in an ascendant moment as a major news breaker. There's lots to talk about here imo.
I mean doesn't your take strain credulity as well? Let's actually think where most discussion happens these days, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, the few remaining newspaper comments sections. I'd struggle to list more off the top of my head.
Why wouldn't influence campaigns, we know every big country to be running, target this site? What reason would they have to leave it out from their list? Why not target a major news forum for the more wealthy and connected (predominantly) Americans in tech? This is not an uwu smol bean site anymore and the cost of (undetectably) botting any given site is rapidly approaching cents.
I just see the same thing over again. I flag some article, then later I look at the comments and everyone is saying "rah rah there's a cabal of vote bots that flag articles". Obviously not - it was me? Is it so unthinkable that normal people on HN are flagging political articles because they are explicitly disallowed by the site guidelines?
As self-proclaimed hackers who are part of a community whose core values include curiosity and critical thinking, we do ourselves, and the world, a massive disservice by closing our eyes and ears to important information just because it's political in nature.
Hacker culture and fascism are antithetical, and we should all be acutely aware when the current regime moves towards violence to squash dissent.
i know the site moniker is "hacker news" but the tech industry at large is the furthest thing from being anything resembling a collective of hackers...
The actual technical thought leaders aren’t necessarily representative of the tech industry at large. Id like to think at least some with a hacker ethos have made it to decision making positions - and hacker news is a spot for em to congregate.
Eh, I think most of the folks here are, whatever else, "temporarily embarrassed venture capitalists". That certainly seems consistent with fascists and with the tenor of much of the discourse I read here.
I've seen the term "request coalescing" used to refer to a technique to minimise the impact of cache stampedes. Protects your backend systems from huge spikes in traffic caused by a cache entry expiring.
It's (arguably) against site rules. It doesn't gratify ones intellectual curiosity and is something they'd cover on the news. There's a large uptick in political content this year, and I agree US news is crazy right now, but this site requires posting discipline or it'll become no different to a subreddit.
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
It implicitly paints the administration, and thus Elon Musk, and thus Silicon Valley bigwigs, in a bad light. Very many of the users of this site will flag anything which does so, under the guise of politics being not of interest to hackers, even as many other users of this site express interest in such conversations. (Even for me to honestly mention this phenomenon is technically against the rules, though.)
That is source available, not open source. The term "open-source" is widely used to describe software that is licensed using a specific set of software licenses that grant certain freedoms to users. You can read more here[0]
It's open source if you're using language like a normal human being. If you're a bit of a pedant and wish everyone to adhere to definitions imposed from on high regardless of real-world usage, it's absolutely not open source.
I think typical premium is about 20% for acquisitions.
The amount may have been negotiated prior to this month's downturn, which Hashicorp was hit pretty hard by (they had about a 10% fall based on what I'm seeing).
Yea, I think it often depends on where a company's stock has moved recently. IBM's offer is still below HashiCorp's 52-week high. That means there's probably a lot of current investors who likely wouldn't approve a deal at a 20% premium. If your stock is near its 52-week high, then a 20% premium looks a lot more reasonable.
April-August of last year, HashiCorp was regularly above a 20% premium over Monday's close. Many investors might think it would get back there without a merger - and it had been higher. IBM is offering $35/share which is close to the $36.39 52-week high. In some cases, investors are delusional and just bought in at the peak. In other cases, a company's shares have been under-valued and the company shouldn't sell itself cheaply.
I don't think one can really have a fixed percent premium for acquisitions because it really depends. Is their stock trading at a bargain price right now? Maybe people who believe in the stock own a lot of the company and don't have more capital to buy shares at the price they consider to be a bargain - but would vote against selling at that bargain price even if they can't buy more. They're confident other investors will come around. An acquiring company wants to make an offer they think will be accepted by the majority of investors, but also doesn't want to pay more than it has to. If the stock has been down and investors think it's a sinking ship, they don't have to offer much of a premium. If the stock is up a ton and investors sense a bubble, maybe they don't have to offer much of a premium. If the stock has been battered, but a lot of shareholders believe in it, then they might need to offer more of a premium.
Analyst consensus I've seen on long-term price has been floating around $32-34 per share. Take that with as much salt as you think it needs but it's at least interesting that it's within shouting distance of (but not over) the IBM offer.
This seems to be a perfect example of the 'flag' button being abused by people as a sort of "mega downvote" instead of using it correctly to mark offtopic, clickbait, flamebait, spam, or other inappropriate stories.
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