I get the irony, but its a bit meaningless since we can't compare the quantity of these (yet) uncensored posts with those that have been taken down, and thus aren't visible.
More importantly, other commentors here have already admitted to flagging this entry. The way flagging exists now rewards one-sideism and partisan behaviour - all it takes is a relatively small group of discontented people to take down a story that is otherwise interesting to the vast majority of posters. A counter-flag option would balance things.
> all it takes is a relatively small group of discontented people to take down a story that is otherwise interesting to the vast majority of posters.
That's not accurate, because if a story is interesting to the vast majority of users, it will get lots of upvotes—and lots of upvotes is enough to defeat a small number of flags. In that sense, we already have the counter-flag option you're arguing for.
That's good to know, thank you for the explanation.
Stories don't always get the chance to gather the sufficient amount of up votes before being nipped in the bud by dissatisfied flaggers though, depending on the time of day. Some of them, like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46357887, clearly had great interest here and got a large number of upvotes that was, nonetheless, insufficient to prevent the flagging.
That's true. Then again, however, if a story is important enough to the community, it will get reposted—sometimes many times, either with the same URL or a different one. It's not so easy as people assume for flags to suppress that kind of story.
The submission you linked to (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46357887), however, was not that kind of story (i.e. one which the majority of users want to see on the frontpage). Rather, it was the kind of story that some users want to see on the front page, but not the majority of users*.
It's the latter class of story which is more vulnerable to flags. That's generally what we want in a flagging system, and I think most HN users would agree with that in principle (though not of course in specific cases where the story is something that one personally finds interesting).
I think they were all flagged to varying degrees. That's partly why I asked for clarification - there are so many things your question might mean that I wasn't sure which one to answer!
It’s a holiday, so I’ll just pose this as a rhetorical question to you and let the matter rest:
What’s your level of confidence that these threads aren’t getting flagged as part of a coordinated effort? Be that a lone MAGA nutter running 20 sock puppets through resnet proxies, or a paid covert influence campaign?
If there were theoretically a common cluster of accounts all repeatedly flagging political posts unfavorable to the Trump admin within a few minutes of each other, do you currently have the tooling in place to see that happen?
I certainly don’t speak for everyone on HN, but I think the allegations of censorship here have more to do with the specter of bad actors abusing the flag system to limit the reach of certain posts, rather than you or anyone else affiliated with Big Ycombinator (TM) putting your thumb directly on the scale.
The accounts that flag these stories are almost always established accounts, so I'm not too worried about them being sockpuppets or paid influencers.
From everything we've seen, flags on political stories are a coalition between (1) users who don't want to see (most) political stories on HN, and (2) users who don't like the politics of a particular story they are flagging. In other words, users who care about the quality of the site, and users who care about a political struggle.
This dynamic shows up on all the main political topics.
There are some accounts that abuse flags in the following sense: they only ever flag political stories, and their flags are always aligned with the same political position. When we see accounts doing that, we usually take away their flagging rights.
This, so far, seems sufficient to me. If we start to see indications that it's not sufficient, we'll take more action.
I know there are many users (actually a small-but-vocal minority of users) who complain that flags are being abused to suppress political stories. What these complainants never seem to take into account is that we want most political stories to be flagged on HN, for a critical reason: if they weren't, then HN would turn into a current-affairs site, and that would not be HN at all.
From the point of view of HN fulfilling its mandate (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), the status quo around flagging is not so awful—it is within (let's say) a standard deviation of the desired state: most (though not all) political stories either fail to make the frontpage or get flagged off the frontpage.
That's the desired outcome, not because such stories are unimportant—often they're far more important than anything that does stay on the frontpage—but because HN is trying to be a particular kind of site. Food is more important than toys, but that doesn't mean there's no place for toy stores, or that toy stores should dedicate more shelf space to food. It doesn't mean that toy stores are suppressing food! or that toy store proprietors don't care about food or don't think people should have any.
When we become aware of a political story that is being flagged off the frontpage even though it fits HN's criteria for being on-topic (e.g.: contains significant new information, has some overlap with intellectual curiosity, has a chance of a substantive discussion, and there haven't been too many political stories on HN recently), then we turn off flags. This is the best strategy I know, so far, for balancing the frontpage according to HN's mandate.
If you (<-- I don't mean you personally, of course, but any HN user) want us to change how this works, you'd need an argument that engages with why we don't want most political stories on HN's frontpage. That is, your argument would need to proceed from what kind of website HN is trying to be, and trying not to be. That's the fundamental point.
Instead, most arguments I hear are concerned with the behavior of flaggers, whether they're "politically motivated" (i.e. are against the political causes that someone personally identifies with), whether they are "unfairly suppressing discussion" or not, and so on. None of this engages with the fundamental point. I don't want to say we "don't care about any of that as long as the overall outcome is achieved", but I do think (1) it's secondary, and (2) we would be foolish to make changes that made HN do worse by its mandate. I'm only interested in changes that make HN better for its intended purpose.
After many discussions with users making such objections [1], I get the feeling that they have a mistaken idea of what principles HN operates by, or think it should operate by different principles. The principle they seem to favor is that submissions should simply be ranked according to upvotes. The stories that get the most upvotes are the ones that people care most about, and those should be the ones on the frontpage. Anything else is unfair — is censorship, putting a thumb on the scale, and so on.
There are a ton of reasons why HN doesn't work this way and indeed is designed not to. The most important is simply that if it did, it would be a different site. The frontpage would consist of the hottest and most sensational/indignant topics, and yes, plenty more would be political. But it wouldn't be HN. We're optimizing for something else entirely, and there's no way that this kind of site can work by upvotes alone. [2]
Flagging on HN is part of this optimization effort, so if you want to change how flags work, you'd need to show how it would move the site closer to this optimum—the goal we have, rather than some other goal that we don't have. HN is far from that optimum, so there is room for improvement. But we can't optimize for two things.
I think part of what makes this site special (on the modern web at least) is that the moderators like yourself think thoroughly and deeply about all of this. It’s pretty awesome y’all do that.
How is this emotionally driven? It seemed like a dispassionate presentation of factual material to me.
Of course, no presentation of facts is without bias of some sort (if only via their choice of which facts to present), so don't ever stop thinking critically. But flagging/censoring any presentation of facts (even biased) never helps, regardless of your viewpoint. If you disagree, write or promote a thoughtful take that explains why.
I'm politically very conservative, and I'm super grateful for this. The intense political polarization in the US tends to allow party-line adherence on either side to substitute for accountability to the truth, and that is a disaster regardless of which side is currently in power. Whatever side you're on, please have the guts to hold your side's leaders accountable to the truth, not just the opposite side's leaders. We will all suffer if just one side fails to do that.
The point being, it's not hysteria if it's just true. What's going on is bad thing are happening, and some people would rather force themselves to be delusional than acknowledge reality.
You could say that, because anyone can say anything, but you'd just be wrong.
Obviously, "fine" is subjective. Serial killers are just fine with eating Cheez-its out of a bowl crafted from a human skull.
But when the topmost officials are routinely doing very illegal things, we have at least some metric - they're illegal. When they just gloss over the illegal things they're doing, that's bad.
People are really missing the broader context of CECOT and the trump administration as a whole. Who cares if a few hundred not-criminals get tortured overseas? That's a statistical drop in the bucket.
And it is, but the broader implication is what matters. The implication that due process is merely a suggestion, the implication that this administration does not give even a single fuck about the american people, the implication that suffering is a price this administration is willing to pay for a prize they cannot quantify.
Whether these things are happening or not is, again, not up for debate. The debate shifts to apathy. Do you care about America or it's citizenry? Or, in a pursuit of correctness, are you willing to burn it all down?
Such foolishness, selfishness, and naivety is only observed in very young children. Those with developed brains under the cost of actions, and their lasting effects.
> Whether these things are happening or not is, again, not up for debate.
Of course it is. And when, in a few years, everything is fine, the sky hasn’t fallen, and in fact we’re doing better — you’ll just be shrieking about whatever the next thing is you’ve been told to be upset about.
> Those with developed brains under the cost of actions, and their lasting effects.
Is this the reddit-tier self-congratulatory slop that passes as an argument in your circles?
Well you ignored my entire argument, so me implying you're stupid worked out, didn't it?
To reiterate my argument, which you have reinforced: the question is NOT are these things happening, because they just are. So we won't debate it.
The question is what are the lasting effects. Which you actually alluded to right here:
"And when, in a few years, everything is fine, the sky hasn’t fallen, and in fact we’re doing better — you’ll just be shrieking"
See, so you DO understand that these things are happening. Where we disagree is the lasting effects, the implications.
You believe our president fucking the American people up the ass doesn't matter, or is secretly a good thing. As I've said, apathy, or naivity - the sight of a goal with no understanding of its cost or even it's gain.
I can become the richest person on Earth by killing everyone else. But what value did I create? None, I only destroyed value. That's the separation between a goal and it's cost and it's path.
You're probably thinking "well I know that, even a child understands that", but evidently you don't, or the cognitive dissonance is so strong you're willing to override everything you've ever known in pursuit of correctness.
Even if you're right, at what cost does it come? What will the world be worth when law no longer matters, when we have a monarch? Even if you like the monarch, will serfdom make you happy?
This is not me being melodramatic. As we've both already established, laws are being broken, and due process is being thrown out. A few broken eggs, no?
But it's not about the broken eggs and it never has been. Those are a canary. The broken eggs get useful idiots like yourself to advocate against your own best interests. To advocate that it's okay to break the rules, so long as you win. But what you're really saying when you say that is that you plan on winning forever. Very bold, no? Very naive, no?
I strongly disagree with your assessment. Are you unhappy that it's discussing how the wealthy people are getting control of the us? Please make dispassionate arguments to support your views.
That's a dumb take. Burying your head in the sand won't change reality.
If you cared to even watch the content you flagged, you'd have seen one of the former prisoners was a young college student with no criminal ties. I'm from south America and also went to college in the US. It could've been me.
Note that the accused TdA member claimed to be a college student in Venezuela. He was not enrolled in any US school.
Not saying he deserved to be deported to a third country, just that there's nothing publicly available that substantiates his side of the story. Part of not burying one's head in the sand is acknowledging when someone might not be the most reliable narrator.
How is that germane to this discussion? I already made it clear I didn't think the Venezuelan migrant in the segment should have been deported to a third country under those conditions.
This feels like an attempt at a setup instead of an actual discussion of the thread's subject. That's especially glaring since you went trolling through my post history, a signature of Reddit users looking for a 'gotcha' moment more than HN users engaged in dialogue.
This is a factual discussion of the president sending undesirables to a concentration camp in a foreign country. It's certainly not hysterical.
If this is emotional slop to you and you feel the need to complain about it, maybe you SHOULD be on r/Conservative or Xitter where you will find lots of likeminded people saying that this stuff is no big deal. Ironic.
They may not be completely objective, but you're probably not either. We'll all do best to listen to opposing points of view (especially those that are directly critical of our side) as they will likely have truth in them that our side doesn't.
Lots of hackers find porn very interesting. In fact, my first "real job" as a hacker was for a company with ties to the 1-900 industry that had decided to expand out onto the internet (not just to sell porn). Stories about porn would be interesting, submissions of nothing but pornography itself ("because it's censored!") are not.
I would be more sympathetic to the argument that this is relevant if the submission was an article about media censorship, or CBS's audience or leadership, and how said censorship, audience, or leadership relates to technology or emerging trends in media.
But this is literally just a controversial TV news broadcast, that people of one political persuasion say was "censored" and people of another political persuasion say was held off the air "temporarily" until it met network fact-checking standards. That sort of political bickering is most uninteresting, and is most definitely not why I've been reading HN for the past few decades.
This seems similar to the "Is Github Down?" submission problem, where the submitter simply links to github.com.
That's a poor submission, because by the time most people click on it, Github will no longer be down.
There might be an interesting discussion to be had about outages at Github, but the better submission would be an article or blog post about the outage, not just a link to the site and a three-word title.
If someone wants to write an article or blog post about this news broadcast, which links to "hard facts and analysis not available through popular channels," that seems like it might be a worthwhile submission. But just a link to the broadcast by itself is not leading to interesting or on-topic conversation—the top comment right now is an ad hominem attack against Larry Ellison, without any supporting facts or analysis that he had anything to do with this story at all.
The very first subheading is entitled "What to Submit." I quoted it in my initial reply as rationale for why the people flagging this submission as off-topic were justified.
