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There are many things I appreciate about YC News but being certain that this report will not be censored here is something I truly appreciate about this forum.

There are many things I appreciate about YC News but being certain that this report will not be censored here is something I truly appreciate about this forum. Thanks @Dang et al.

tekla 3y ago
> being certain that this report will not be censored here Why? HN censors shit all the time, and its all invisible unless you go looking for it.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jeffbee 3y ago
This exact story was already flagged by the community. The HN groupthink is way more powerful than the moderator.
- paulette449 3y ago
  Indeed. Well, not to take away from the moderation team.
- etc-hosts 3y ago
  well to be fair, the Mission Local story from 3 days ago about Tan tweeting Tupac lyrics, was posted 3 days ago and flagged 3 days ago. This story's lede is several San Francisco Board Of Supervisors members receiving post cards quoting Garry Tan's words. Different story.
  - soneca 3y ago
    The same story (different source) was also flagged today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39199703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39199703
- ecf 3y ago
  In a lot of ways censorship here is worse than other places due to the weirdly attributed trust given towards HN members who think of themselves as enlightened intellectuals. For example, try to post something pro Apple, or even try to play devils advocate. Your comment will be flagged within minutes.
  - subtra3t 3y ago
    I think in most regards HN actually has a pretty favourable opinion of Apple, at least when compared to, say, Google or Microsoft.
ijhuygft776 3y ago
There's a lot of censoring here, not sure how you can be so certain. I think that the admins outsource most of the censoring to "senior" users though by giving more weight to their flagging.
- the_only_law 3y ago
  > I think that the admins outsource most of the censoring to "senior" users though by giving more weight to their flagging. Nah even easier, it’s mostly outsourced to groupthink. Doesn’t involve anything nefarious, just inaction and delegation.
- edanm 3y ago
  If you have a system that relies on voting, and people vote against some things appearing, that's not called censoring! That's just the system working as intended.
  - LexiMax 3y ago
    So, just so we're on the same page, you are saying that users of "news.ycombinator.com" wanted to purposefully hide a story about the CEO of Y Combinator wishing the death of San Francisco politicians, as well as the actual death threats that have surfaced as a result. You can call it censorship or not, but it's not a good look either way.
    - edanm 3y ago
      > [...] you are saying that users of "news.ycombinator.com" wanted to purposefully hide a story about [...] No, you're interpreting things here in a specific way. It could be that users didn't think it belonged on HN because it was politics, which is often frowned upon. It could be that they thought there was a problem with the article itself. In any case, even if it was totally the community choosing to not want to see this news (which I doubt), it wasn't a deliberate action by the people running the site, which does make a difference (otherwise that would've been the original accusation).
buildsjets 3y ago
[flagged]
IshKebab 3y ago
Looks to me like they've applied some kind of heavy weighting penalty so it's already down to page 7. I wonder how hard it would be to reverse engineer the penalty. You can easily poll to get points/time for stories and then probably use that to figure out the algorithm and any penalties/boosts (an old version seems to be documented).
- dang 3y ago
  We didn't touch the post. It set off the flamewar detector, and rightly so. However, because of the principle I described recently at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39172045 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39172045*, I'm going to turn that off now. * and past explanations over the years: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderate%20%22less%2C%20not%20more%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

There are many things I appreciate about YC News but being certain that this report will not be censored here is something I truly appreciate about this forum. Thanks @Dang et al.

tekla 3y ago

> being certain that this report will not be censored here Why? HN censors shit all the time, and its all invisible unless you go looking for it.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jeffbee 3y ago

This exact story was already flagged by the community. The HN groupthink is way more powerful than the moderator.

paulette449 3y ago
Indeed. Well, not to take away from the moderation team.
etc-hosts 3y ago
well to be fair, the Mission Local story from 3 days ago about Tan tweeting Tupac lyrics, was posted 3 days ago and flagged 3 days ago. This story's lede is several San Francisco Board Of Supervisors members receiving post cards quoting Garry Tan's words. Different story.
- soneca 3y ago
  The same story (different source) was also flagged today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39199703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39199703
ecf 3y ago
In a lot of ways censorship here is worse than other places due to the weirdly attributed trust given towards HN members who think of themselves as enlightened intellectuals. For example, try to post something pro Apple, or even try to play devils advocate. Your comment will be flagged within minutes.
- subtra3t 3y ago
  I think in most regards HN actually has a pretty favourable opinion of Apple, at least when compared to, say, Google or Microsoft.

ijhuygft776 3y ago

There's a lot of censoring here, not sure how you can be so certain. I think that the admins outsource most of the censoring to "senior" users though by giving more weight to their flagging.

the_only_law 3y ago
> I think that the admins outsource most of the censoring to "senior" users though by giving more weight to their flagging. Nah even easier, it’s mostly outsourced to groupthink. Doesn’t involve anything nefarious, just inaction and delegation.
edanm 3y ago
If you have a system that relies on voting, and people vote against some things appearing, that's not called censoring! That's just the system working as intended.
- LexiMax 3y ago
  So, just so we're on the same page, you are saying that users of "news.ycombinator.com" wanted to purposefully hide a story about the CEO of Y Combinator wishing the death of San Francisco politicians, as well as the actual death threats that have surfaced as a result. You can call it censorship or not, but it's not a good look either way.
  - edanm 3y ago
    > [...] you are saying that users of "news.ycombinator.com" wanted to purposefully hide a story about [...] No, you're interpreting things here in a specific way. It could be that users didn't think it belonged on HN because it was politics, which is often frowned upon. It could be that they thought there was a problem with the article itself. In any case, even if it was totally the community choosing to not want to see this news (which I doubt), it wasn't a deliberate action by the people running the site, which does make a difference (otherwise that would've been the original accusation).

buildsjets 3y ago

[flagged]

IshKebab 3y ago

Looks to me like they've applied some kind of heavy weighting penalty so it's already down to page 7. I wonder how hard it would be to reverse engineer the penalty. You can easily poll to get points/time for stories and then probably use that to figure out the algorithm and any penalties/boosts (an old version seems to be documented).

dang 3y ago
We didn't touch the post. It set off the flamewar detector, and rightly so. However, because of the principle I described recently at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39172045 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39172045*, I'm going to turn that off now. * and past explanations over the years: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderate%20%22less%2C%20not%20more%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...