Hey y'all, I'm a Senior Data Engineer with 5 years of experience working in the Data space in the top cloud platforms. I'm highly experienced in cloud migrations, cloud architecture for batch jobs, data pipeline development, building internal alternatives to 3rd party SaaS's and development of internal python tooling.
This is a typical phenomenon when a topic is divisive, and the Israel/Gaza topic is one of the most divisive.
Edit: We sometimes turn off flags when an article contains significant new information and also has at least some chance of providing a substantive basis for discussion. I haven't read the current article yet but it seems like a reasonable candidate for this, so I turned off the flags.
For anyone who wants more information about how we approach doing that, in the context of the current topic, here are some past explanations:
Seeing as these discussions are always insta-flagged and you need to revive them to allow for discussion, have you considered adding 'Israel' and 'Palestine to a set of keywords you need to approve to be set as flagged instead of letting automation take over?
Having a human in the loop prevents bad-faith actors from abusing the system to suppress information and discussions.
I think we probably already see the most important ones, such as the one today. If there's an article that particularly deserves having the flags turned off, people can always bring it to our attention at hn@ycombinator.com.
I also think it's the most divisive topic here (for the last few months at least), but since it's obviously very personal for me, it's hard to know if that's a bias in my view.
I don't think this topic is divisive anymore. I used to be on the fence about the whole conflict despite growing up in a Muslim country and being fed propaganda. But nowadays I can't in any shape or form rationalize Israel 's actions.
As someone who sees both sides of this, and as someone who didn't understand this for some time, it's important to understand that one reason a story is likely to get flagged is because users think it's highly unlikely to lead to productive discussion. It doesn't mean it's a bad story, or even unworthy of discussion, but many types of stories seem to, pretty predictably, lead to a cesspool of comments where it's clear most folks have no desire to listen to opposing points of view.
FWIW, I found this to be a really interesting story that I didn't previously know about, so I hope it stays up, and this is a story I'd be willing to vouch for.
>it's highly unlikely to lead to productive discussion.
I guess all you have to do, if you want to suppress information about something, is to ensure that its comments always devolve into unproductive discussions. Funny, I once read about this as a tactic for controlling information flow in online communities...
flagging is voting to censor a particular view. it could have legit uses like spam or toxic comments but just as easy to censor narratives that isn't aligned or clashes with the voter's
im not sure what other tools exist other than a block button like X
There is a system in place for flagging specific comments by users.
Admins can, and do, prune entire branches of comments off of posts.
These two methods would take a bit more work than just banishing the topic entirely, but with topics like the first time that "AI" kill lists are publicized, maybe exceptions should be made.
There's always Twitter/X or Reddit if that's your jam. I just think it's hard to disagree that a huge, if not primary, value people feel they get from HN is the discussion, which is probably unmatched compared to any open forum on the net, and a huge part of that is moderation and curation.
Like I said, I don't agree with this particular topic getting flagged (I saw it go back and forth numerous times), but I also would push back hard on any allegations of "censorship". There are plenty of completely open forums online anyone can access with a click, and HN is most decidedly not that, by design, since the beginning of the site.
If one don't want to engage, the hide button isn't too far from the flag button. It's important that people have the option to speak freely and openly about this topic, since so many places shut down any conversation that shows sympathy for Palestinians and/or doesn't paint Israel as unequivocally morally good. This is one of the reasons Israel has been able to get away with this behavior for so long.
Considering what regularly doesn't get flagged on this site related to AI, conflict, etc., this topic seems to fit in.
Discussions with lots of comments are routinely pushed down the stack. dang has commented on that a few times I think. Anyway it's not the subject, just the raw numbers of the activity.
Yeah, you'd hope that a higher level conversation about the use of technology in war, pros/cons, etc could supersede personal political beliefs about this particular conflict. We don't need people's moral judgements on who is right or wrong in this particular case but it would be neat to hear people's thoughts on utilizing information technology as a weapon of war.
I don't take any issue with people flagging a post, so long as an actual person makes the ultimate decision on whether to keep it up.
This is in contrast to how I feel about a statistical model flagging people to be murdered. That's not even remotely OK, even if the decision to actually carry out the murder ultimately goes through a person. Using a statistical model to choose targets is incredibly naive, and practically guarantees that perverse incentives will drive decision-making.
Not in this instance, I assume. People flagging too much can result in shadowbanning, but perhaps the mods think that flagging posts that might host heated political-religious discussion is ok (even if they don't have such discussion, and even if they are on-topic for HN).
I also don't think there is a way to complain about abusing flags other than emailing the mods; I have no clue about the effectiveness of this complaint.
I have emailed many time over the years. Got a response from dang every single time. Several accounts lost vouching privileges thanks to my emails, among other things — they were vouching clearly guidelines-breaking crap, I drew dang’s attention, and they were penalized. So, if you have a concern, just email.
Yeah, but who’s hiring threads the company is supposed to read your skills and respond if you are an actual fit, not just send it to every single person who posted. I’d bet dollars to donuts that half the candidates they sent it to don’t even qualify for the position.
I think the assumption here is that the company claims they looked at your qualifications and decided it might be worth your effort to apply, when in fact they didn't.
If that's what's happening, it's a form of fraud (but legal, I imagine).
You're right. You are confused. He or she didn't get an email like that. It was an email that said, "Saw your profile on HN and we think your skills look like a good fit for our team." No one saw the profile and thought that. Re "wondered if you'd be interested in our YC company," no one wondered that.
This was a deceptive email meant only to advertise the fact that Anima 1) exists, and 2) is accepting applications. It should have been posted in the "Who is hiring?" thread.
Hi! I'm a Data Engineer specializing in building in-house ETL solutions to circumvent over usage of 3rd party SaaS's, Data Warehousing, GCP, AWS, & Python. Look forward to hearing from you!
It's a dick move because the expected social arrangement at an American restaurant with table service is that the customer tips the waiter. American labor laws encode this expectation and people who work as waiters expect part of their compensation to come from that arrangement.
If you eat a table service restaurant and refuse to tip because you think the arrangement is stupid (which it is), you're directly harming the person who serves you by reducing their wages for the amount of time they spent on you. You're taking a philosophical stand (at best, at worst you're just being cheap) at the cost of a real person's income. This person who has no control over the standard tipping arrangement. Your protest does not cause any change and accomplishes nothing expect worsening the day of someone who provided you a service expecting you to hold up your end of the customarily agreed upon bargain. The waiter is not offered a chance to agree to this bum deal (and if you walked into a restaurant and said "who's willing to serve me with no tip to protest the stupidity of American tipping culture?" you'd be rightfully laughed out of the room).
That's why it's a dick move.
There are plenty of options for getting fed which do not involve table service, and if you want to protest tipping culture by not participating in it, you should patronize restaurants which either don't have table service or have a no tipping policy, rather than taking it out on low level wait staff.
The law does not require customers to tip, it requires employers to pay employees at least minimum wage if employees do not receive enough tips to meet the minimum wage requirements.
Location: Houston, TX (US citizen)
Remote: Remote Only
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies: Python, GCP (BigQuery, Cloud Composer, Cloud Functions, IAM Management), AWS (DynamoDB, Lamda), Azure (IAM Management), Snowflake, Linux, Terraform, Qlik Replicate, SQL Server, MongoDB, Rust.
Resume: https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/export?format=docx&id=1...
Email: rhnsolomon@gmail.com
Hey y'all, I'm a Senior Data Engineer with 5 years of experience working in the Data space in the top cloud platforms. I'm highly experienced in cloud migrations, cloud architecture for batch jobs, data pipeline development, building internal alternatives to 3rd party SaaS's and development of internal python tooling.
Please feel free to reach out!