I really don't think that's the case. I've had enough exchanges with dang and observed enough of his moderation (visible to anyone by looking at his comments <https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang>) that the notion that HN's moderators apply undue favouritism to HN companies seems ... unlikely. There are notable cases in which the bloom is well off the rose --- Reddit, Qurora, and Uber, notably --- that your argument has little support.
Instead I think that this really is a case of well-intentioned moderation rules, generally quite reasonably applied, having pernicious exceptions and edge cases. I suspect dang himself would tend to agree that tone and topics tend to have a status quo advantage, as I'd noted above. He and I have had this disagreement a few times, and the ultimate mission of supporting intellectual substance (as 93po noted above) is almost always the standard that he defends.
Though interestingly the top result by popularity searching "by:dang intellectual" shows a vehement defence of a progressive viewpoint against an oppressive one:
Again: I think this is an instance of disagreement, not a pronounced or intentional site moderation bias. Mostly I'm in awe of dang's patience, consistency, and level-headedness in moderation. It's a tough job.
And sometimes, or probably often, the role of fighting an inequitable or ineffective status quo involves a lot of repetitive messaging.
I don’t mean favoritism towards specific companies; I mean suppressing opinions that are inconvenient to companies. For example, blatant anti-Chinese xenophobia or hate speech towards economically disadvantaged seem to be welcome here, but just try to link something to Christian fundamentalism, or try to point out the kinds of hate speech that is still tolerated by American mainstream.
I am a harsh critic of most moderation but I will say I think the more likely motivation here is to make sure HN doesn't turn into a cesspool or become overly unprofessional. Politics is inherently both of those things and it makes sense to suppress the worst of it.
dredmorbius|3 years ago
Instead I think that this really is a case of well-intentioned moderation rules, generally quite reasonably applied, having pernicious exceptions and edge cases. I suspect dang himself would tend to agree that tone and topics tend to have a status quo advantage, as I'd noted above. He and I have had this disagreement a few times, and the ultimate mission of supporting intellectual substance (as 93po noted above) is almost always the standard that he defends.
Though interestingly the top result by popularity searching "by:dang intellectual" shows a vehement defence of a progressive viewpoint against an oppressive one:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7978950>
Again: I think this is an instance of disagreement, not a pronounced or intentional site moderation bias. Mostly I'm in awe of dang's patience, consistency, and level-headedness in moderation. It's a tough job.
And sometimes, or probably often, the role of fighting an inequitable or ineffective status quo involves a lot of repetitive messaging.
trasz|3 years ago
93po|3 years ago