Comment by EcommerceFlow 8 days ago
Tom, please fix the flag abuse problem. It's gotten to the point where I realize there's no point in commenting on many threads, given my opinions, some of which are very normal nationally.
Often times, you comment not to change the mind of the person you're replying to, but to provide a rebuttal for the readers at home. If nobody challenges problematic ideology or corrects misinformation, it can spread like a disease.
Shouldn't that be directed to those with an agenda who and are flagging certain posts?
Those of us who complain about this highly targeted flagging just want to avoid censorship. I can't see how we need to reflect on this.
Forums like this are "censored" and that's a really good thing. We don't need a steady stream of (for example) hate for women, minorities, and trans people that you see on truly uncensored forums.
I agree, but when that is abused because of a minorities' preference, then it's bad.
That's what's happening here.
All illegal speech should be hidden from public discussion.
However, it would be disconcerting if stating biological facts led to censorship on a forum that focusses on science and technology.
The definition of "hate" has been stretched a lot over the last few years, and if that restricts discussion of facts and ideas, then it is harmful.
For sure. I've had comments flagged that I thought were perfectly reasonable and non-controversial. My first reaction was to be angry and annoyed. But then my kinder angels suggested that perhaps I phrased my idea poorly and people misunderstood that I was largely agreeing with them, or at least very respectfully disagreeing. And then I decided to be more careful with my phrasing next time.
Many people feel that flagging is worse than it used to be, but they don't agree at all on what should or shouldn't be flagged. That makes this feedback less actionable than one might assume.
HN gets tons and tons of threads that are critical of LLMs, so it's possible that the ones you're seeing get flagged are just below median quality and/or overly repetitive of previous discussions.
Hey, Dan. I'd be really interested if you could share more about the metrics. As the climate of the world around us has changed, I think a lot of us at least feel flagging has become a cudgel used to silence opposition. Me, for criticism of the current administration. Others, for their views on topics like gender.
Maybe we just care more and notice it about that subject now. Maybe it's always been this way. But while you often leave long comments that go into how these systems work and the struggles with trying to adjust them or understand of it's even necessary (good stuff), I would be fascinated to see a blog post or something where you really give us a talking to about the state of the community and anything y'all have been trying on your end.
Just a thought, obviously, you have a whole job moderating already! Have a good day!
Dan and Tom can speak to this, but by my reading of the guidelines, "criticism of the current administration" and "views on topics like gender" are both explicitly prohibited:
"Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity." (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
It has nothing to do with being on the side of "the opposition" or "the man," it's because those sorts of posts inevitably lead to the same, repetitive, off-topic debates and flame wars.
Flagging should be used as a cudgel against posts that break the rules. There are plenty of places on the internet to debate politics and gender; HN is not one of them.
A political talking point can be nationally popular but still political, so, outside the scope of the site.
Anyway, which nation? I think we also aren’t allowed to push Communist party talking points here, despite that party being highly supported in some countries (not that I’d want to, just saying, nationally popular doesn’t mean much).
A lot of people don't read the Hacker News Guidelines⁽¹⁾ before submitting and deserve to be flagged. Quoting (emphasis mine):
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.
You say that, but there was a big thread on Val Kilmer on the front page this morning...
This is not really mysterious or anything, though, right? They allow bending of the rules for stuff that is not likely to devolve into a big stupid political flame war, because, like, pick your battles.
Also I’d expect there to be some annoying edge cases if they tried to ban that sort of discussion. I mean, Kilmer is not a tech person. But tech people die sometimes too. Arguably discussing their life as people is outside the scope of the site. Maybe we shouldn’t have had a conversation about how great a guy Mr. Moolenaar was and just discussed the technical aspects of his life’s work. But, come on, that’d not really be a human way of responding to somebody’s death, right?
If we’re going to have these sort of lightly rule breaking threads, then I don’t think it is necessary to ask the mods to adjudicate exactly who’s technical enough to warrant one. It’s a fuzzy spectrum anyway, we have tech people, tech policy people, STEM outreach people, tech YouTube influencers, celebrities that played beloved nerd characters.
When I've found myself being publicly tsk'ed by the people around me, I've taken a moment to try go figure out why they disapprove of what I'm saying. It's been a useful life exercise.