Hcrknews.com (Flagged / Censored content can be seen)

[md224]

I'd love to get a discussion going on whether people support or oppose the flagging (and subsequent disappearance) of politically charged topics on HN. While HN is not a politics site, some of these censored topics have been tech-related.

I guess it comes down to a value judgement: is it worth discussing tech politics even if it spawns flamewars and heated arguments? I think it's worth it, but this is certainly debatable. Curious what other HN users think.

My own thinking is that political discussion between opposing factions is always going to be contentious, but that doesn't mean it should be suppressed. However, angry rhetoric can lead to further polarization, so I'm not sure what the right approach is.

Edit: funny enough, this topic itself was flagged and killed! I've vouched it, but I'm open to hearing arguments for why this link doesn't belong.

[zitterbewegung]

The problem that HN faces is the fact that as social news aggregators become larger and larger the quality and type of user changes. To enforce this we have flagging and removal of content. The problem with this aggregators is enforcement and policing doesn't scale. Also, as the aggregator becomes larger people want to discuss more and more topics.

Personally I would rather have a HN that doesn't have politically charged topics. Although some of those topics are relevant to the community if we start letting more and more political topics then we can have factions of users and once that starts HN won't be fun to read anymore.

Reddit attempted to solve this through subreddits but that didn't work. Slashdot used moderation. Digg died because they released a new version. I suppose either the censorship or the flagging and removal of political topics and otherwise will be the thing that eliminates HN.

I think that any social news aggregator has a shelf life and you can't keep it from degrading to either something you hate and or something that doesn't serve the people who run the site.

[john_moscow]

Maybe just add a special topic flag "politics" and let everyone have a convenient switch in the profile settings whether they want to see those topics in the feed or not?

[reitanqild]

I thing some of these topics are the most interestng we have.

I mostly accept that they don’t belong on HN though.

But it feels deeply hypocritical when some political stories stay on the front page for hours until more information starts to arrive and they get flagged off swiftly.

[jacquesm]

So, I've vouched for it too, mainly because it would be nice to have the option on HN to simply ignore the flags for those who feel they can handle it and don't need to be told by others what they can and can not discuss.

It would be a pretty simple affair software wise, those that need it can have their safe space and those that don't can discuss whatever they want without being shouted down.

Seems like the optimal solution to me.

[mzh0]

Mysteriously, many thread, including this thread itself, has been revived from dead (but could possibly still be flagged):

For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14962366

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14961857

And it seems this thread itself is excluded in HN top

[DanBC]

> funny enough, this topic itself was flagged and killed!

Flagged because of the stupid -rule breaking- title.

[as1mov]

FYI you can view dead/flagged submissions by going to your profile and enabling showdead.

I don't know if this is the correct place to criticize HN's moderation policies, it's kinda disheartening to see the list of submissions that were removed. News articles regarding the diversity memo were allowed but submissions linking to the actual memo were removed for some reason. If the actual memo is sexist/bigoted, then people can read it directly and decide it for themselves, instead of relying on second hand information.

I mean even if you agree with what Google did, isn't it good that we discuss about it and point out the things that were problematic with that memo. What good does it do if we just try to shove the incident into a closet and pretend that it never happened?

Edit: Even this post was flagged :/

[greenyoda]

"News articles regarding the diversity memo were allowed but submissions linking to the actual memo were removed for some reason."

No, this article, the first one to publish the full text of the memo, got 353 points and received 616 comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14937895

Several subsequent submissions of the same content were flagged as duplicates.

[jacquesm]

Yes, but the discussion instantly dies and when flagged to death you can't even comment anymore.

[wvl]

As an aside, I do find it interesting that this submission is nowhere to be found from the main page itself (or at least 5 pages back, despite 50 points and 17 comments. I guess it was flagged/vouched back, but having showdead on in your hacker news profile does nothing to help if the algorithm drops the submission into nowhereland.

That is reason enough for the existence of hckrnews.com, imo.

[forthefuture]

The flagging isn't a rogue algorithm.

It's the majority of the sites users saying they don't want to keep seeing the same two toxic viewpoints throwing shit at each other.

[jacquesm]

If that were the only way it was used it would be fine. But it is also used to simply shut down rational discussion on subjects the flaggers don't like.

[amingilani]

If you want to see flagged or censored comments, you can enable those in your profile settings, just change showdead to yes

[daxorid]

Yes, but it's rather difficult to find censored articles in the first place, once they've gone dead.

[beaner]

When posts are flagged, is there a reason that is provided and is it viewable somewhere?

It seems like there's a lot of legit, even large threads that have been flagged and removed. Even ones that don't seem offensive, they're just related to or covering news on some things that perhaps some people find offensive. Seems crazy that they'd disappear.

I'd be interested in reading the justifications for removal.

[DanBC]

Users flag posts. It's not a moderator action.

There's a setting called showdead that you can change to see all the flagged posts.

[venning]

To create an intentional false dichotomy: if I have to choose between a site that surfaces all content regardless of controversy but accepts that related discussions will be lower-quality, and a site that directly or indirectly suppresses some content to maintain higher-quality discussion overall, I will choose the latter.

I appreciate that some people feel that the "loss" of some submissions due to automatic flamewar detection algorithms or user flagging is a problem, but I, for one, appreciate that the discussions that remain on the front page (for a long time) have a reasonable guarantee of being high quality.

Relatedly, it may also have an effect on the non-controversial submissions by establishing that flamewars will not remain in high positions for long. (I realize that's a bit of a "broken windows theory".)

[as1mov]

Most of the recently flagged submissions were related to the diversity memo. I don't mind if fluff articles from dailydot are removed. But then when a verbatim copy of the memo was posted, and even that was flagged. I highly doubt that was flagged because it would have low quality discussions. People just abuse the flagging system to hide content that they don't agree with.

[ComputerGuru]

Meh, the stories were killed for a reason.

Thanks @dang and the rest of the team for keeping HN relevant and sane. It's never a fully objective decision, but I'm glad to leave that to them rather than have to dig through crap to find something good (cough unlike reddit cough).

[Artemis2]

Besides the flagging, I really like hckrnews as a daily reader. The ability to see immediately what is new since my last visit (and to tune the number of posts I want to see) is a huge timesaver.

[madmax108]

Absolutely absolutely agree with this! hckrnews is what I use to keep track of what's new on HN since I last visited!