Comment by roflyear 2 days ago
I really don't think that HN lets dissenting opinions thrive (well, not anything that is truly controversial but not clearly hateful). That may feel cozy but it's not a reflection of anything pure or good, imo.
My issue is it seems like something has to only be a bit controversial to be completely hidden from everyone. There was the recent DF article about how Gruber thinks his articles are being artificially shitlisted and I can't help but agree? I don't necessarily think the mods have their fingers on the scale, but I wouldn't be surprised if the algorithm works in a way where if enough people flag something it gets automatically hidden, and there's enough people who see DF and automatically flag it that those blog posts get hidden every time.
That site had 11 major frontpage threads in the last year, which is a lot.
Every single one of them set off the flamewar detector. That's extremely unusual. If it were one or two I'd call it random, but 11 in a row, whatever the reason, is not random. We turned off that software penalty on about half of those threads.
In his article https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/the_website_hacker_news_i... he mentions several times that he is aiming for "comment traction," treating articles with more comments than upvotes as successful while complaining that recently there haven't been as many comments.
It does make sense that DaringFireball would consider starting a flamewar a job well done, but of course HN is optimizing for the opposite.
I follow the HN subreddit and routinely see very active threads that aren’t in the feed.
Strong disagree here... While there are definitely those that will bury some opinions with downvotes, there are others that will upvote. Conservative, Libertarian, Progressive, Liberal and even outright Communist views get expressed in varying comments and that's just political leanings.
I only really recognize this because I'll be actively reading/replying sometimes and see comments go +/- 2-3 up or down votes back and forth on the same comment. While you may be at say -2, that's just the aggregate. I sometimes wish I could see the total up/down votes just out of curiosity.
Then you're not spending enough time reading the comments on controversial stories. Disagreement is alive and well on HN.
I disagree. People will frequently say that downvoting is not for disagreeing, but in every controversial thread dissenting opinions are quickly downvoted and frequently flagged. Some recover, but many die or end up pushed down into obscurity.
Mildly controversial opinions sometimes survive and get discussion, but anything past that rarely get a reply and just get downvoted and flagged into oblivion. This isn't exactly a slight against HN, as this happens basically everywhere past a tiny userbase community. But I don't think it's particularly right to put HN on a pedestal for its ability to handle controversy.
There are over 1,200 comments on this controversial story alone, with plenty of debate within: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43517833
What more evidence do you need that spirited disagreement is alive and well here?
That seems like a pretty mild controversy to me. How many people could even say whether their water has added fluoride?
Downvoting for disagreement has always been fine on HN. People sometimes assume otherwise because they're implicitly porting the rules from a larger site, but that's a mistake.
It has but I'm not sure this works at the scale HN operates at now. When the community was smaller, the band of opinion was narrower, so the downvote worked better. Now that the community is large I'm not sure if this scales well. Just a thought I've had over the last few years.
Wouldn't that only be true if the vote thresholds are absolute? If the impact of a vote is adjusted based on voters present, it should scale.
Downvoting pushes peoples comments down and greys them out, effectively silencing them. It creates echo chambers.
I reserve my downvotes for when arguments are made in bad faith, rely on logical fallacies, or present know-false information as an argument.
If someone presents an argument on something I disagree with, but it's made in good faith and is well-structured, it deserves an upvote, even if I still disagree afterwards.
I had a whole paragraph that I removed that was to preempt this reply, but I thought it wasn't needed.
We don't delete posts unless their authors ask us to. The most that happens to a user-flagged or otherwise moderated post is that it does into the [dead] state, and [dead[ posts aren't deleted. They remain visible to anyone with 'showdead' turned on in their profile.
If anyone wants more, here's a longer explanation from the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43538728.
> The most that happens to a user-flagged or otherwise moderated post is that it does into the [dead] state...They remain visible to anyone with 'showdead' turned on in their profile.
And that is a huge reason why HN's flagging/moderation is rather good! Thanks for the good system.
Is that a moderation issue? Because to me that's more of a system / culture issue.
You can't argue in people's stead. If most dissenting commentary is hurtful, inciteful, manipulative, generally demagogue, etc., it's going to get culled, and you get a situation where "dissent isn't thriving".
Moderation does participate in the culture of course, but I disagree that it would drive it necessarily. You can only do so much by reminding people to align with the posting guidelines and removing ill fitting posts and individuals.
This place would look like 4chan if it wasn't for the moderation.
Moderation absolutely drives the culture, by setting a tone that drives away certain users while attracting others.
In other words what ever issues a site has are inherently due to moderation whether it be a choice on the part the moderators or a lack of resources to moderate as they would like to.
I don't think we're actually disagreeing. Yes, moderation is key, but ultimately people post the content. As you say, it's a matter of attraction. But if the target group of attraction is empty, there's no amount of moderation that can help that.
I'm not sure about that, but a lot of it depends on what you consider to be "dissenting opinions".
For example, having the opinion that manifest V3 is good for users is an opinion that will not thrive on HN.
Personally I hope Tom will bring new moderation policies that will truly let unpopular opinions thrive, but I don't have high hopes here since this is just an announcement of a new moderator, not an announcement of new moderation policies.
"Not thriv[ing]" is not the same as being quashed. Minority opinions don't always rise to the popularity or acceptance level of majority opinions, and that's OK.
Let us not use the word "thrive" or "quash" to avoid misunderstandings. To rephrase, I hope that on HN even minority opinions have reasonable rebuttals. Unfortunately what currently happens is people flag minority opinions with no discussion.
> For example, having the opinion that manifest V3 is good for users is an opinion that will not thrive on HN.
There is a difference between expressing unpopular opinions (e.g. "manifest V3 is good"), which receive an appropriate level of considered disagreement; and expressing opinions that are removed administratively.
In my experience, the former is quite common, while the latter only occurs in cases of hateful or off-topic comments. That is as it should be. No one is obligated to agree with you, and that fact should not dissuade you from expressing yourself.
I’m a fairly steadfast holder of the “I like apples walled garden, it’s my choice to be there” argument, and I think as a dissenting opinion on this forum I get a lot of flak for it. But that’s not a moderation problem, it’s the fact that my opinion is different and I have 10x the number of people disagreeing with me than agreeing with me.
Upvoted, but your opinion is wrong and I didn't want to leave without telling you I hate your opinion.
> having the opinion
What I see a lot of is this:
User posts "$opinion $generalization $snark $dismissal $adhominem".
User gets down voted or flagged. User complains that downvotes are for expressing $opinion and that $opinion is not allowed on this site!
But we can all see the other things in their post that probably brought on most of the downvotes.
> For example, having the opinion that manifest V3 is good for users is an opinion that will not thrive on HN.
That's not a moderation issue. You can post that opinion, and people will disagree with it, post responses to it, and downvote it. It will not be flagged out of existence, unless it's also violating site policy in other ways.
A polite well worded post that disagrees with the mainstream will indeed still exist, but it will be moderated to unreadably transparent and hidden by default. It’s not a great experience.
Meanwhile personal attacks and hyperbole regarding Elon Musk and Trump have become very common on HN.
I agree it depends on the definition. Quite honestly my vibe, and really that is all it is for any of us discussing this, is pretty much anything more aggressive than my comment above (or even including my comment above, once more people read it).
I definitely DO NOT mean clear hate speech, etc.. that's not my point at all.
So, do you mean you don't like tone policing? You can say pretty much anything as long as the tone stays intellectual and doesn't go into brain damage politics, harassment, or conspiracy zone where it's being banned because it's off-topic and, frankly, exhausting and unproductive.
No, and if you read the tone of my posts and even the tone of dang (and others) here I would argue that my tone is not out of line and arguably more polite.
But I'm the one that is rate limited in this thread and prevented from interacting with people politely.
On the one hand, I think it's a bit unfair that this comment is currently downvoted as it's discussing moderation on a topic about moderation, so very much on-topic in this particular submission.
On the other hand, I think it needs to be more specific in order to be valuable feedback. Which dissenting opinions? Can you provide specific examples of comments you think got unreasonably flagged?
There's been an uptick in political posts which are off-topic per the guidelines, so an uptick in the absolute number of flagged submissions would just mean the community is properly enforcing the guidelines, which is good. However, as a consequence of that uptick in political submissions and flagging, there's also an uptick in the number of users complaining a post is unjustly flagged, because they incorrectly conflate enforcing the guidelines with political opinion, and that is not good.
I think a lot of users are tired of this back and forth, so my guess is they are reading between the lines of what you said (since you didn't provide specifics) and filling in the blank with what _they_ think you mean about undeserved flagging, with the topic of politics being top of mind at the moment. This shows that being specific helps both by providing actionable feedback while also increasing clarity, which is your responsibility as a communicator.
My understanding is that flagging does not imply moderation. When enough people flag a comment, it becomes dead automatically. There is, separately, the case that a moderator “kills” an unacceptable comment, but then it only appears as [dead] I believe (unless it was also being flagged by people). Someone correct me if this is wrong.
It’s not a decision made per individual submission or comment, I think. Of course, the specific automated mechanism exists because some human decided to implement it. My point is, in the case of the flagging mechanism, it’s not the moderators who are deciding based on the contents of the submission or comment.
Little ironic considering you're the second comment everyone sees on this thread at the moment.
I feel like I often get into protracted discussions here in which I am defending a minority view, but I don't feel discouraged from doing so.
A huge part of that is that the tone is almost always civil and the arguments are typically in good faith.
I downvoted it because it bears little relation to this story, not because I disagreed with it. It's basically complaining that they're not getting enough love from other members. The mods don't quash comments merely because they convey dissenting opinions; they quash them when they become toxic to the community.
I guess you could say the comment is conflating the mod team and the community.
I think the community can be pretty susceptible to groupthink and hyper-conformity, and there are tons of legitimate criticisms around that. But it's true that usually the mod team won't suffer directly from that, from what I've seen.
It is a shame that people will downvote a thing that is expressing an honest opinion.
I can't really relate to the mindset of people who use downvoting as a 'I disagree' button.
I don't think this extends to the way that HN is moderated or run. It is worth looking at dang's posts every now and again to take in the job that he does and how patient he can be, even with antagonism aimed directly at HN or himself personally.
From time to time I also have a look at the histories of some of those antagonistic people. Frequently there are signs that their behaviour was not always like this. Recent posts might be outright abusive and sound like the postings of angry teenagers. A few years earlier they might have been posting reasonable discussions on their thesis topic or tutorials on some useful subjects. Keeping that in mind helps you realise that these are real people and there may be other things going on in their life.
I think there are some good things to learn from people who work with addicts. You can simultaneously challenge bad behaviour and be compassionate to the person who committed it. Similarly, this is why I'm not a fan of cancelling people or holding them forever accountable for past bad behaviour. If they recognise that their behaviour was bad and are endeavouring to not be that way again, I don't think permanent ostracism benefits anyone. If anything it restricts people to a community that amplifies their negative behaviour.
I can't really relate to the mindset of people who use downvoting as a 'I disagree' button.
That's a valid use of the button by design, HN is literally made to allow for that use. Plus it mimics real life interactions - there is a social cost/friction to saying things people disagree with or think are outright wrong. Most online chitchat places deteriorate because they remove such social frictions.
Your comment being downvoted for suggesting dissenting opinions are not treated well on HN kinda makes your point. I agree in general and spend less time here because of it. HN is still not as bad as many alternatives, but I wouldn't say it's great for ideologically diverse views.
If you think your dissenting opinions should be popular, your opinions probably aren't all that dissenting. This person's dissenting meta-opinion is unpopular, it's still there and it's still being discussed. Discomfort is inherent in dissent, it's not people putting a lot of likes on your NormanRockwellFourFreedomsPainting.gif.
It's not that they need to be popular, it's that voting them down leads them to be dropped off from view (and makes it less likely dissenting views will be shared). Reddit is the extreme case of this where anything outside the majority group consensus is heresy to be voted down/hidden/banned.
Better sites don't do this and have in-good-faith discussion despite disagreement.
Can you link some of these better discussions on better sites?
Dissenting views are regularly highly visible, often as replies to consensus views. Even better - well-argued counter-narrative/counter-conventional wisdom views regularly appear as top or highly ranked comments. That's because the people making those arguments do what sensible people do when making an unpopular argument - they put in the work to make their case more persuasive. They don't sit around complaining that the other kids don't listen to them, they care about their issue enough to try to work with human nature rather than hoping some magical technology will change human nature for them.
The problem is HN is mainly left leaning so its difficult to have discussion at times as dang and the community will shut it down quickly as differing opinions are not welcome even if its factual.
(chances are people will downvote without comment or scream "ThAtS nOt TrUe")
(Love how HN proved my comment as correct)
> (chances are people will downvote without comment or scream "ThAtS nOt TrUe")
> (Love how HN proved my comment as correct)
Please don't do this here. It's against the site guidelines (see the bottom: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), which guarantees downvotes, and then the combination of help-help-I'm-being-repressed and I-told-you-so is annoying to pretty much everyone.
As for "left leaning", see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870 (Feb 2021). The specific examples are old now but there is an endless fresh supply from each tap.
Yeah, as someone who has criticized the mod team, saying you are biased is just laughable. You go out of your way to be as unbiased and user-oriented as possible. My biggest criticism is procedural, Dan and friends are doing good work.
> HN is mainly left leaning
This is largely an illusion, as can be seen by the number of people complaining in the other direction about how wacko libertarians or MAGA or whatever dominate on here.
What you're actually observing is that HN is one of the more diverse public spaces you participate in and there's no personalized algorithm that filters the content to only show what you want. When your exposure to left-leaning content goes from <10% on an algorithmic feed to ~50% on HN, it feels like being overrun.
Just know that it feels just as overwhelming to the left-leaning people on here, and they will jump to the same interpretation in the opposite direction.
That's why you have to earn down vote and flagging privileges here. It's still abused, I agree.
It's not left leaning, it's establishment leaning. But that's only regarding politics and social issues.
Sure but I'm not even talking politics! My comment itself was barely a criticism of HN and, yeah, downvotes don't matter - but it's exactly what I am talking about. Any push against that coziness/bubble is not tolerated.
I do think it's OK for some forums - if the community agrees - to say certain topics (like politics) are off limits.
I don't really think it's ok for a community to say discussion about what should be discussed is off limits... or being critical of policies, the bubble, etc...
> My comment itself was barely a criticism of HN
Your comment is (a) off-topic and (b) smacks of a complaint about not getting enough up-votes. Neither of these areas are looked upon positively in HN. If this style of comment is your modus operandi, it may explain why your work is not well-received, and in short it has nothing to do with the popularity of your opinions.
Yeah! Absolutely. They want the wheel to keep turning - and I do too, if I'm being honest! I get paid from the system like lots of people here.
I just would like for more people to acknowledge that. IDK. Seems more honest and more fitting to what everyone says the HN culture "really is."
Probably because a single example at a single time point can't really be extrapolated to the entire platform across all times. The comment being downvoted proves nothing (as evidenced by the fact it's now upvoted to the 2nd top comment!)
And this comment of yours I'm replying to will probably get downvoted because it's a complaint about votes that contributes literally nothing to the conversation (in fact, detracts from it).
Yes, because the comments are offtopic and against the site guidelines (see the bottom of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
"I the noble freethinker, standing bravely against the mob" comments are boring and repetitive, and therefore always off topic.
HN does not welcome dissenting opinions in certain areas of tech where the individual freedoms of techies come into conflict with status quo social harms to non-techies; so, for example, you won’t see many HN articles about the ethical dilemmas of working at Palantir, how our industry’s libertarian foundations obstruct labor organizing today, what advantages the ‘bros’ receive in return for their misogyny, and so on. HN is a light-touch moderation site — as libertarian as possible, in keeping with our roots — so I certainly don’t hold the mods as responsible for the community’s defensiveness in that regard. In general, whether tech or otherwise, it’s not possible for a community to welcome uncomfortable dissent against its own underpinnings without a heavier hand on the moderation wheel than is cultural acceptable for HN and for our community. That doesn’t mean that HN rejects all dissent — certainly they may be other pillars of obstinance I haven’t personally identified and studied over the past fifteen or twenty years participating here — but, yes, absolutely, HN’s community has zero tolerance for certain dissent.
I'm like 80% sure this is trolling as a tee up for all the people responding with "HECK YEA DISSENT IS HAPPENING." :D
My experience is that HN's Overton window is probably on average 15-20% larger than most forums. That's not uniform across all topics though. So if you skew toward a particular set of topics it may feel like a typical forum, or even in some ways more constrained.