Ask HN: What's with flagging articles criticizing Musk?
Can someone explain what is going on with this? Some recent examples:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42904200
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42903336
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42895453
49 comments
You can mail such questions to [email protected] although this one has been addressed in some of the recent mod comments.
The reason such things get flagged has less to do with Musk but with the fact that HN isn't really a current events/news discussion site. It's porous - some things are big and/or interesting enough to get front page coverage but the tick tock of everyday news stories is mostly offtopic and people tend to enforce that with their flags.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42901248
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42901317
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42896490
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42776410
The reason such things get flagged has less to do with Musk but with the fact that HN isn't really a current events/news discussion site. It's porous - some things are big and/or interesting enough to get front page coverage but the tick tock of everyday news stories is mostly offtopic and people tend to enforce that with their flags.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42901248
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42901317
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42896490
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42776410
Hacker News Guidelines
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"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."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"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."
So much of the tech industry is now precisely about politics and power.
Hacker News cannot be afraid to look at it, cannot run away from it, and, if you're part of the tech industry, must take responsibility for it.
Hacker News cannot be afraid to look at it, cannot run away from it, and, if you're part of the tech industry, must take responsibility for it.
Note those words most and probably.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922426
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922426
Most things are in some way connected to politics and power and they're regularly discussed here, along with their political implications and power dynamics. That still doesn't mean every news story is worth discussing here given that it's a forum with the explicit goal of not discussing most news stories.
But it's not in "some" way connected. It's now explicitly and directly connected.
You can't look the other way anymore.
You can't look the other way anymore.
Look away from what? Musk and his antics show up in threads regularly. But it can't be on the front page 5 times a day. There's an article discussing current admin shenanigans on the fp right now.
In your previous post you tried to deny and minimize the problem.
That kind of apathy is exactly what you can't afford to look away from.
That kind of apathy is exactly what you can't afford to look away from.
Can you link me the post where I did that because I don't even know what 'problem' you're referring to.
This one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42907961
The problem is that so much of the tech industry is now precisely about politics and power. The problem is that so much of the tech industry it is now explicitly and directly connected to it.
If Hacker News doesn't have the wherewithal to face up the these realities then it really should think about a name change.
Maybe "Happy Fun News" or something.
The problem is that so much of the tech industry is now precisely about politics and power. The problem is that so much of the tech industry it is now explicitly and directly connected to it.
If Hacker News doesn't have the wherewithal to face up the these realities then it really should think about a name change.
Maybe "Happy Fun News" or something.
I don't understand what that's supposed to be denying. I'm just explaining how HN works. The connection between tech and politics is hardly new and it's discussed on HN all the time. I mentioned there is a current events discussion on the front page right now and I got it wrong - there are two, and that's not counting the many places these topics come up in other threads. I just don't see how you arrive at this 'looking away' business. Not having a thread for every Elon Musk goosestep is not 'looking away', it's just no the sort of place that has a thread for every Elon Musk goosestep.
There's links to literally years of explanations of this stuff in my other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42907475
There's links to literally years of explanations of this stuff in my other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42907475
zfg(1)
Does anyone have anything new to say on these topics? We're going around and around in circles. Is there a substantial discussion? Do we learn anything new?
zfg(1)
Maybe so. But I still don't have to talk about it here. There's lots of places to talk about politics, and Musk, ad nauseum. HN is supposed to be about something else.
Politics may be destroying a large number of things right now; I don't want it to destroy this site too.
Politics may be destroying a large number of things right now; I don't want it to destroy this site too.
"But I still don't have to talk about it here".
But you repeatedly do...
But you repeatedly do...
Politics is a major part of the tech industry now. It's what it has become.
Building any kind of ethical framework for hardware and software engineering necessitates looking at the ugly side.
If Hacker News is genuinely not up to that then it's falling short.
Building any kind of ethical framework for hardware and software engineering necessitates looking at the ugly side.
If Hacker News is genuinely not up to that then it's falling short.
It may be falling short of what you think it should be. A bunch of the rest of us don't think that, though.
You may feel strongly about what you think we should do, but you don't get to tell the rest of us what the site should be about. You don't get to tear up the community guidelines and write your own.
Let HN be what it is. If that doesn't match what you want, go find somewhere else that does.
You may feel strongly about what you think we should do, but you don't get to tell the rest of us what the site should be about. You don't get to tear up the community guidelines and write your own.
Let HN be what it is. If that doesn't match what you want, go find somewhere else that does.
> Let HN be what it is.
I will not let it be dishonest.
I will not let it be dishonest.
> It may be falling short of what you think it should be.
It may not be falling short of what you think it should be.
> A bunch of the rest of us don't think that, though.
And if a bunch of us do think that, what then?
> You may feel strongly about what you think we should do, but you don't get to tell the rest of us what the site should be about.
Sure, but neither does anyone else. Like, ehm, you.
> You don't get to tear up the community guidelines and write your own.
What if many of us think they might need a few changes? What if most of us do? I mean, you seem to be arguing on the assumption that nobody, or at least almost nobody, does. Do you have any statistics to back that up?
> Let HN be what it is.
(At the risk of sounding somewhat Clintonian:) So what "is" HN?
If you're going to say "What it's always been!", then... No. It already isn't. Becasuse nothing ever is "what it's always been". Eternal constants don't exist; everything changes all the time. (Guy I used to know back in Ephesus used to say that.) HN now is already something very different than what we got user IDs on back in 2013, and it ain't gonna stop changing. So where were you with your resistance to change for the last dozen years or so?
> If that doesn't match what you want, go find somewhere else that does.
"Just because the Democratic Party is actually advocating labour camps for capitalists and mandatory sex change operations for everybody now is no reason for you to demand it should change! Let it be what it is, and if that doesn't match what you want, go find somewhere else that does!"
"Just because the Republican Party is actually advocating concentration camps for immigrants and mandatory megachurch membership for everybody now is no reason for you to demand it should change! Let it be what it is, and if that doesn't match what you want, go find somewhere else that does!"
See how ridiculous that is? So no, that's not how any of this works.
It may not be falling short of what you think it should be.
> A bunch of the rest of us don't think that, though.
And if a bunch of us do think that, what then?
> You may feel strongly about what you think we should do, but you don't get to tell the rest of us what the site should be about.
Sure, but neither does anyone else. Like, ehm, you.
> You don't get to tear up the community guidelines and write your own.
What if many of us think they might need a few changes? What if most of us do? I mean, you seem to be arguing on the assumption that nobody, or at least almost nobody, does. Do you have any statistics to back that up?
> Let HN be what it is.
(At the risk of sounding somewhat Clintonian:) So what "is" HN?
If you're going to say "What it's always been!", then... No. It already isn't. Becasuse nothing ever is "what it's always been". Eternal constants don't exist; everything changes all the time. (Guy I used to know back in Ephesus used to say that.) HN now is already something very different than what we got user IDs on back in 2013, and it ain't gonna stop changing. So where were you with your resistance to change for the last dozen years or so?
> If that doesn't match what you want, go find somewhere else that does.
"Just because the Democratic Party is actually advocating labour camps for capitalists and mandatory sex change operations for everybody now is no reason for you to demand it should change! Let it be what it is, and if that doesn't match what you want, go find somewhere else that does!"
"Just because the Republican Party is actually advocating concentration camps for immigrants and mandatory megachurch membership for everybody now is no reason for you to demand it should change! Let it be what it is, and if that doesn't match what you want, go find somewhere else that does!"
See how ridiculous that is? So no, that's not how any of this works.
> unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon
I guess the second coming of Nazism to an unprecedented scale and without any serious opposition anywhere is 1/ uninteresting and 2/ absolutely irrelevant to tech.
I guess the second coming of Nazism to an unprecedented scale and without any serious opposition anywhere is 1/ uninteresting and 2/ absolutely irrelevant to tech.
USA turning into a Russian style oligarchy fits neatly in the "interesting new phenomenon".
I mean, it does seem that Musk stories get flagged way more rapidly than other Trump misbehaviour stories; in practice I suspect that a certain amount of the user base is comprised of his weird sycophants.
As said elsewhere about aversion to some current events topics etc, it's also not entirely flagging off the face of the earth. In some of those examples you shared, they had a hundred upvotes and numerous comments - that's not nothing. That's hundreds of ppl that saw the story and/or engaged, before maybe the discussion devolved leading to more flagging. Other examples with high activity current event stories are just duplicates and there are other submissions of the same/similar story that are getting eyeballs (and maybe also eventually being flagged but they're there anyway). Stuff moves fast around here, but all is not lost.
1. HN's readers perform most of the site moderation, directly through votes, flags, and vouches, and indirectly through discussions on posts. Somewhat counterintuitively, posts which gather a high number of comments may get penalised if comments exceed votes, by an automated "flamewar detector" heuristic. This (and flags) can be turned off by HN's mods if requested. Such requests (and other meta / moderation questions) are best directed by email to [email protected]. See guidelines here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42922791>. More: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>.
2. There are a few additional automated adjustments, most notably site penalties and "Major Ongoing Topics" (MOCs) which attract a large number of submission may also have a penalty applied. Frequently dang will make mention of this, though you can email queries as well. See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011>.
3. Where mods do get actively involved, it's generally to reverse or disable such automated actions, or user-applied flags. The automated systems work well most but not all of the time. (It's taken me some time, and a fair bit of analysis of HN, to reach this conclusion. The system's not perfect, but it's pretty good.)
4. On account of 1) above, there are topics which HN has difficulty discussing reasonably, and many of those are political. Generally, if a topic strongly divides a large fraction of readers, you'll find that posts and many comments tend to get flagged and/or downvoted (comments only). If you suspect this is abusive or is preventing cogent points from getting made, email mods.
Keep in mind too that there may be people who find any discussion of Musk on HN to be tedious and flag on that basis. Reading intent on flagging is at best a highly approximate pastime.
2. There are a few additional automated adjustments, most notably site penalties and "Major Ongoing Topics" (MOCs) which attract a large number of submission may also have a penalty applied. Frequently dang will make mention of this, though you can email queries as well. See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011>.
3. Where mods do get actively involved, it's generally to reverse or disable such automated actions, or user-applied flags. The automated systems work well most but not all of the time. (It's taken me some time, and a fair bit of analysis of HN, to reach this conclusion. The system's not perfect, but it's pretty good.)
4. On account of 1) above, there are topics which HN has difficulty discussing reasonably, and many of those are political. Generally, if a topic strongly divides a large fraction of readers, you'll find that posts and many comments tend to get flagged and/or downvoted (comments only). If you suspect this is abusive or is preventing cogent points from getting made, email mods.
Keep in mind too that there may be people who find any discussion of Musk on HN to be tedious and flag on that basis. Reading intent on flagging is at best a highly approximate pastime.
It's about Musk but also SpaceX now controlling the US finances...
"Elon Musk staff has been caught installing drives inside the OPM office":
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42903499
"Elon Musk's DOGE reportedly gained "full access" to the federal payment system":
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42902670
"Elon Musk staff has been caught installing drives inside the OPM office":
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42903499
"Elon Musk's DOGE reportedly gained "full access" to the federal payment system":
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42902670
I didn't flag those articles. Discussions of Musk devolve into partisan hyperbole. I'm indifferent on him generally. Many of the discussions become unhinged and absurd. When I attempt to illustrate how extreme some of the hyperbole is, my own comments are generally flagged or downvoted into oblivion. Those who make extreme claims without substance are celebrated. This suggests that a reasonable discussion is not possible on some of these contentious topics.
I also understand that the HN algo has a feature where flamewar-esque threads can trigger flagging of the entire article.
I also understand that the HN algo has a feature where flamewar-esque threads can trigger flagging of the entire article.
I also understand that the HN algo has a feature where flamewar-esque threads can trigger flagging of the entire article.
It doesn't but there's automatic downweighting which is not flagging. Flagging is something people do.
It doesn't but there's automatic downweighting which is not flagging. Flagging is something people do.
The irony that this post is now flagged as well...
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