[throwawaylolx]

This article is ranked 16th on HN first page right now, and it has 80 points, was posted 4 hours ago, and has 16 comments. A different article [1] is ranked 8th on HN right now, and it has 31 points, was also posted 4 hours ago and it has 18 comments. They were both posted about the same time, they have the same number of comments, but the article that has significantly more points is ranked significantly lower.

If I understand the HN ranking algorithm, this means this submission is heavily reported. This is not the first time I observe this behavior for anti-Google submissions. Is there a different explanation for this phenomenon other than heavy reporting?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21636093

[dang]

I don't know what you mean by heavy reporting? There were tons of submissions of this story, most of which were flagged by users.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21636583 is the main discussion now. That's a better article than this one from the point of view of the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), because pure advocacy posts aren't as supportive of intellectually curious conversation. They're much more likely to start off on a polarized footing and degenerate from there. Also, they don't contain much information. In that way they fall in a category of related things like online petitions, event announcements, etc., that we tend to moderate as off topic for HN.

Certainly there have been plenty of stories on HN that are critical of Google, and they're not off topic, as long as they meet the site guidelines by being intellectually interesting. Note that word 'intellectually' though, because there are plenty of other kinds of interesting, which are fine, but not what this site is for.

[9HZZRfNlpR]

Well before going full conspiracy, I believe a lot of tech people are anti union themselves compared to some other fields. I'm not one of them but as long as there is demand like right now for programmers, the conditions and pay is good.

[flir]

> for programmers, the conditions and pay is good.

Whatever happened with that anti-poaching agreement the big SV companies had? Because it seems to me the pay and conditions would be a lot better in a truly free market.

[otras]

Do you mean the High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust...

[goatinaboat]

as long as there is demand like right now for programmers, the conditions and pay is good.

The time to assert your rights is when you have leverage, if you wait until you need those rights because you have no leverage it’s too late.

[CryptoPunk]

Unionization could very plausibly weaken the US tech sector. It's happened before (US Steel, the US passenger rail service, high-volume manufacturing, the Big Three auto makers).

[iwintermute]

Yeah, just remember what those pesky unions did to german automakers

[CryptoPunk]

(copy-pasting)

Germany seems to have strong unions and a strong auto industry, but the German economy as a whole has suffered decades of wage stagnation. One outperforming industry alone doesn't negate the broader correlation between restrictive labor laws, and degraded economic performance.

Also, Germany has many advantages in manufacturing that are independent of its labor laws, like a strong work ethic and tradition of engineering, good trade schools, etc. So an argument can be made that it has a strong tendency to be a manufacturing power that is capable of counter-acting the harmful effects of bad policies.

One possible indication that unionization has had a harmful impact on German economic development is if you look at Germany's past compared to its present you see that it developed more rapidly relative to its contemporaries before embracing the social-democratic/unionized-workforce model.

[AstralStorm]

Every country developed more rapidly at some point in time. What's your correlation coefficient?

Is the optimal social order defined near ancient Euphrates or in the industrial revolution era UK?

[CryptoPunk]

From what I remember, the percentage of programmers/tech-workers who have libertarian/free-market views is much higher than percentage found in the general population.

[pizzazzaro]

Its almost like... Coders live lives of privilege even before they learn to code.

Imagine trusting the "Market" to make wise decisions.

[CryptoPunk]

>>Imagine trusting the "Market" to make wise decisions.

The market just means other people, free to act without compulsion.

It works because information is transmitted through local decisions, as the changes local decisions make to supply/demand impact the prices that are communicated to the economy at large.

The resulting price system is a result of more economic calculations than any central economic planner could perform, which is why more market-based economies outperform more centrally-planned ones, as the empirical evidence shows.

Anyway, libertarians as a group are the most educated:

https://www.people-press.org/typology/quiz/?pass&src=typolog...

The above shows they do also have the highest incomes, which would support your "they're trying to protect their privilege" theory.

And libertarians are the most rational:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Libertarian views are more consistent with those of economists:

https://www.overcomingbias.com/2006/11/the_big_four_ec.html

[JamesBarney]

I think this is far more likely because software engineers are drawn to arguments based on first principles over ones based on empiricism.

And the majority of libertarians arguments are both based on first principles and appeal to people who like this type of argument.

[flowerlad]

I once posted a story about Google and privacy violations and it reached #1 spot on HN but after about 30 min at the top spot it suddenly moved to page 2. I got the impression that Google somehow has power over ranking here. It could be through reporting by Google employees. But the title of the post was edited too, along with the demotion.

[symplee]

It's almost as if the HN ranking algo should be open sourced, or at least viewable, with the ability for users to see who is flagging articles. Maybe even allowing a marketplace for drop in algo rankings/sorting.

There was a recent post showing the version control history of HN article tiles. That's one step in the right direction.

[democracy]

I think it was just not an "intellectually curious conversation"

[jbc1]

HN weights stories by novelty to avoid having the front page just being round #4643 of never ending social arguments.

If something appears to be just a minor amendment to an event that's already been represented on HN, it gets penalised. Dang has a comment about it somewhere.

I've already seen posts on here about both Google firing organizers and hiring the union busting firm. It doesn't appear novel and deserves the penalty.

[ljf]

True but you will find that there are a bunch of sites and sources that don't rank as highly as others. The Guardian needs more up votes to get to the same position as a non newspaper site, plus there is the matter of the ranking of the person that posted it, the ranking of the voters, the time scale of the voting patterns, and interactions with comments.

There are loads of things that affect weighting and ranking here. Not that I mind, I largely support the way this community is run, pretty hard thing to keep the site down te as valuable and as interesting as it is.

[jeen02]

Because the article title is extremely clickbaity and wrong. They fired four people because they were repeatedly breaking privacy policies and leaking documents.

[xtiansimon]

> “They fired four people because they were repeatedly breaking privacy policies and leaking documents.”

I just heard the news about the firing and allegation google hired a firm with expertise to bust unions.

If you’ve ever worked an entry-level job at any firm with high turnover (retail, food service) you will know first hand managers excel who can manufacture write-ups, which become the basis for just-cause firing.

It’s a thing!

[chimprich]

They fired four people, who allege they were fired for union activity. Google claim they were fired for privacy violations. It's not clear at this point who is correct. Either party might be correct, or both might be to some degree. I'm interested in HN's perspective.

[toopok4k3]

Are you suggesting anti-union actions from a US corporation on a news site run by venture capitalist?

I mean... I hope this is not a new revelation to anyone.

[Causality1]

There's definitely a thumb on the scales. I've found that controversial comments of mine that go up and down a lot in point totals are much more likely to trigger the mysterious "you're posting too fast" message even hours after my last comment.