HN Moderation and Censorship – Community Discussion

[travelhead]

HN is a highly moderated platform that uses several “tools” to silence dissident views including shadow banning posts, removing posts, applying penalties to accounts, account bans, downvoting posts, etc.

I completely understand these actions as it relates to spam or bot activity as all platforms must use moderation to provide a good user experience, but these moderation weapons are primarily used to silence alternative viewpoints and subject matter that does not agree with HN moderators.

Although moderators believe they are acting with good intentions, there are many consequences to portraying the HN platform as an “open” social news community, but secretly silencing opposing views.

The primary issue is creating a narrow filter bubble. Secondly, reinforcing narrow social, technological and political ideologies.

As a community we should keep open the discussion of how these moderation tools are silencing posts and the wider effect they have on HN readers who believe they are reading unfiltered user submitted and generated content.

[zamadatix]

From what I've seen users themselves seem to be the most policing with flags. Even some technically focused comments by newer accounts I deemed in reasonably good faith and wanted to give a decent answer to have been flagged so badly as to be unreliable even if I vouch. For particular example there was one on an IPv4 thread proposing a form of v4 in v6 embedding and I wanted to point out how the standards have already done a more complete version of the idea but couldn't. The HN moderation team seems to come out more towards tone unless the topic is completely over the top on breaking the rules.

Without a specific topic of what is being censored in your view or why it seems to be the moderators themselves it's hard to say much more. I will say HN isnt supposed to be a general open social platform, perhaps one of the problems here is the off-topic guidelines aren't enforced enough rather than the other way around.

[dang]

I unkilled this, for anti-ironic reasons. But as other users have correctly pointed out, these points are meaningless if they don't come with specific links. The minute you give people specific examples to look at, you'll see that they generate an entire spectrum of responses, from strong-agree (from the ones who like the examples) to strong-disagree (from the ones who dislike them). This reveals how hard, indeed impossible, it is to come up with a satisfying answer to this.

Speaking of irony, if you want some, consider this: the most even-handed policy, the most consistently applied, would actually produce an optimum of dissatisfaction—because by applying even-handed principles to all content, it would produce plenty of examples for everyone to dislike, and those are the data points that determine people's views about bias, skew, and censorship (see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).

More ironically still, the most even-handed and consistent policy would actually be perceived by nearly everyone with strong feelings as hopelessly biased and in favor of the other side (whichever that is, relative to the perceiver).

I'm not saying that we do moderation in the most even-handed way, nor that we do so with consistency—especially not the latter, because we don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). But some sort of evenhandedness does follow, as a value, from HN's core principle of intellectual curiosity—since if you exclude things for ideological reasons, you're automatically not optimizing for intellectual interest. So we have to at least try to be evenhanded, and we do at least try.

[travelhead]

Example 1:

Dang you admitted yourself to shadow banning me for this post:

https://travelhead.medium.com/amazon-delists-us-again-3c8874...

You claimed this was self-promotional. The article had nothing to do with self promotion and was written as a critique of big tech, which ironically as an SF “big tech” website you appear to be defending by censoring my submission from HN readers.

All I requested was a “fair chance” to submit my content and get upvoted or downvoted by my peers, which you explicitly forbid by killing the post within 2 minutes and shadow banning me.

In fact, my previous submission on a related topic received 511 upvotes and 267 comments, which was fairly promoted to the first page of HN:

https://travelhead.medium.com/competitor-reported-our-no-buc...

You claimed my new submission was too similar to my previous submission even though it was on a completely different topic.

At what point does Dang (ONE GUY) have too much power and control over what gets seen and distributed to potentially millions of people?

I’ve read over the HN terms, guidelines, rules, and your moderation techniques seem to be completely unjustified. I neither spammed HN, submitted promotional material, used bots, or submitted irrelevant content. Yet my account is treated just as a spammer even though my previous submission had 267 comments and I was interviewed by national media on TV, etc about this exact topic.

Example 2:

Within 5 minutes of submitting this post it gets “FLAGGED” status. Granted, this was probably from the community and not Dang (although I’m not certain). As a community, why is this topic so heavily downvoted and flagged? Why is it controversial to discuss in the open HN’s policies towards content moderation and specifically shadow banning when it’s not clearly disclosed in any terms of service or website policies that are available for the community to read?

Example 3:

After submitting this thread and noticing it was flagged, I attempted to ironically post another submission pointing out this post about moderation was flagged and censored, but my submission was immediately shadow banned:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30240159

Essentially what is happening is there is no discussion on the topic of HN censorship and shadow banning policies, any attempt to discuss it results in immediate downvoting and shadow banning, and this all happens under one guys watch, Dang, who everyone trusts to moderate content without any bias across a wide variety of topics that he may or may not agree or disagree with.

However, Dang, I do appreciate you responding to this thread and “unkilling” this thread. This shows me you are attempting to act fairly, although I disagree with your moderation policies and ability to kill topics so quickly which you solely deem irrelevant (To YOU).

[dang]

> Dang you admitted yourself to shadow banning me for this post: https://travelhead.medium.com/amazon-delists-us-again-3c8874...

Ok, thanks for the link. It turns out that we had a very long email conversation about this last year. One of the things I said in it was "You're not and have never been shadowbanned".

As I explained back then, your submissions were getting filtered by software based on the following site guideline: "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff occasionally, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity." When an account is using HN solely to submit its own stuff, our software interprets that as promotional. I gather that you disagree with this use of the word "promotional"—which is fair enough, but you seem to have forgotten all the lengthy explanations I sent you about exactly how our software works, why it works that way, and what you could do to stop being affected by it.

The bulk of this community, I'm pretty sure, agrees with us about moderating the site in this way. Why do I say that? Because that's why we wrote that software in the first place: community members kept telling us that they don't like it when accounts use HN solely to post their own material instead of participating in a more varied and curious way in the community. I don't believe most people here would agree with you that this is "silencing alternative viewpoints and subject matter that does not agree with HN moderators".

As for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30240159 (which is the current OP), it was killed because users flagged it. The reason users flagged it is no doubt the same as what I tried repeatedly to explain to you in the past: it's not using HN as intended.

By the way, the vast majority of users who email for help in such situations react very differently than you have: they are grateful for the clarification, understand how that software filter relates to the goals of the community (as expressed in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), and agree to use the site as intended. They don't create prolonged antagonistic exchanges by disputing every point and complaining that they are singled out for unfair treatment. They don't try to stir up drama on HN itself with dramatic posts about censorship and moderator abuse. They simply go on to use HN in the intended spirit, and the problem disappears.

[NicoJuicy]

Before you claim silencing opposing views, you should at least have some examples and show some proof that it's not the users flagging or down voting.

Ps. Flagged this because the title is too suggestive and shows/suggests bad faith.

[WaxedChewbacca]

> show some proof that it's not the users flagging or down voting

Not possible to do using any normal means, of course. So, not a very useful hoop to ask somebody to jump through.

But I can testify that although I've never been abusive, I seem to be in an indefinite extreme rate-limiting and shadowban status. I'd link to my innocuous posts for proof, but... they are hidden from you by the shadowbanning system. ...And I'd like to respond to you right now, but I'm being rate-limited.

Is this your daily experience with HN, having your posts hidden from others and having to try to post your comments ten times over a period of several hours? If not, I suggest you are not fully aware of the level of suppression on HN.

[NicoJuicy]

I have showdead on so i can see those posts :)

If you want to be not rate limited, you'll have to contact HN. They will fix it for you, but not if you continue past behavior.

Since that's probably what got you rate limited in the first place.

Obviously complaining about moderation while doing unwanted behavior ( and eg. using other accounts to circumvent) and trying to post here and blame it as a community concern will not help you.

[zamadatix]

In reply to waxedchewbacca not you Nico (he is flagged off to the point of no reply, figure this particular topic would be an exception to ignoring the comment rule):

If you're genuinely looking for an answer 5/7 of your submission history is your COVID stance. Not that this topic doesn't come up on HN, it does, but it's obviously not what the site is or is supposed to be about 70% of the time. There is no singular post to point at and say "shaddowbannable" rather a collective history of things that probably got flagged by users until it either automatically kicked in or triggered a manual review which said "yep, that's not really the primary topic here".

[WaxedChewbacca]

Sure, I appreciate your view on that. My problem with the current situation is that bricks are being thrown at my head every day on HN, but it's not considered idealogical battling when it's my opponents pulling the trigger. It only becomes idealogical battling when I start chucking bricks back.

If COVID isn't the primary topic here, then let's auto-flag all the propaganda about it coming from the likes of the NYT and Washington Post. If talking about that stuff is allowed, then... let me talk about it. I didn't want to talk about it -- users did, until I started explaining views they found jarring, at which point they flagged me into the dungeon (or whatever, I don't know exactly how it works, not that it matters).

You see what's happening. You see how this actually works. They talk about it, I respond, HN puts me in the dungeon while maintaining a facade that HN is some kind of ultra curiosity zone. Such BS.

[zamadatix]

I looked at the top 100 posts right now and only saw one about COVID, towards what I gather would be positive light in your eyes anyways. If I missed 6 that'd still be 10% of how often you feel the need to "chuck bricks" instead of talk about relevant content. Nobody's account is getting shadowbanned or rate limited for occasionally going off topic, the comparison to actions on the site's to actions on your content to your content is apples to oranges. Besides nowhere in the guidelines does it claim or encourage equal representation of off-topic conversation, it says to flag and ignore. Engaging the content doesn't "level the playing field" or anything like that it just negates your downvote/flagging and duplicates the problem.

If we all flag off-topic content and submit on topic content the ratio and discussions will actually get better. If we focus our accounts on replying to such content constantly it doesn't negate the problematic content it increases the amount.

[NicoJuicy]

"opponents" ?

It's an online forum. Nothing more, nothing less.

[WaxedChewbacca]

> If you want to be not rate limited, you'll have to contact HN. They will fix it for you, but not if you continue past behavior.

Oh, I've talked with dang a few times. Are you actually able to point to any bad behavior of mine? As far as I can tell, I've been put in the doghouse for having wrong opinions. At the very same time, HN tries to maintain the mythology that it was necessary to suppress me because of my lack of curiosity, when in fact I seem to be suppressed due to the typical HN user's lack of curiosity. Isn't the practice of suppressing people for having wrong opinions exactly what we need to be talking about?

[ComradePhil]

Well, yes, they do reportedly use several tools but from what I understand the flagging is done by members of the community... and certain number of flags "shadow-bans" your comment.

Silicon valley has certain political leanings which is reflected by the majority members here, as expected.

[zozbot234]

My experience here is that downvotes merely for going against "SV political leanings" never happen. Of course, plenty of outsiders like to complain about the "weird" HN politics. It's too liberal, or too conservative, or both. Ultimately, I find that there's at least some potential for tolerably good discussion that preserves intellectual curiosity, and that's what really matters. The techbros vs. anti-techbros tribal fight is just too boring, and that's where I see downvotes and flags all the time.