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by bittcto 2851 days ago
HN has a long history of censoring particular groups of people based on identity. That’s why it’s become such a monoculture (a monoculture of people generally convinced than HN is diverse, however.)

Down voting things you disagree with despite being well articulated (in fact because they are well articulated) is a form of censorship here.

But of course it goes much further when shadowbanning is deployed to enforce the narrow and rigid views of the moderation team.

Yes, I know pointing this out means it will now happen to me.

Nothing a censor hates more than thwarting the narrative they are trying to enforce.

But that’s why you think it doesn’t happen here. This is the most harshly and hypocritically cultivated walled garden on the Net. (Moderators violate their own rules regularly with impunity.)

Alas, I cannot abide not pointing out these abuses.

1 comments

Click a checkbox in your profile and you can see those shadowbanned posts just fine.

Very rarely are they well written or polite.

I have yet to see well presented, civil, arguments censored. I have however seen entire threads criticizing HN and YCombinator staff, by name, be left alone.

A "third" perspective; I think there's at least some self-censorship (In certain dimensions, don't let me paint this as some universal or even majority thing) from people who tend to write civil, well presented arguments. You can read my post history if you want, and I've _certainly_ had some of my posts get greyed with rapidity (Obviously I selfishly found them to be innocuous but others clearly disagree, I find in situations where the status quo is _aggressively_ in one direction, even expressing moderation is caught in the blast radius), so I avoid the really hot subjects with a ten foot pole; you learn that it just doesn't end well, especially for those of us who have associated our professional lives with this site.

You can notice this more obviously if you watch new, that certain topics reach and get to the front page VERY RAPIDLY and stay there, while others are flagged or fall off with prejudice. I'm not sure I'd call it a huge problem, and the parent post is probably a bit hyperbolic, (Certainly I give the mods benefit of the doubt, even though I've gently disagreed with dang via comment prior) but it's definitely present.