[upwardbound]

Another post which is on the front page with fewer points and older / more stale time is "Writing Portable Rendering Code with Nvrhi" with 5 points from 3 hours ago.

To be clear, I do not believe that the HN moderators are doing anything wrong, but rather that Sam or his friends use a lot of accounts to flag anything bad about him, suppressing those posts.

[dang]

Users flagged it, entirely correctly.

It's a throwaway snarky Reddit comment from 9 years ago whose only interest is that it feeds into the hottest celebrity ragefest of the moment. That's a model of offtopicness for HN!

[upwardbound]

I fully agree that users flagged it. What I would appreciate would be if you can please check the data to see if there is a small group of users who consistently flag all negative things about Sam Altman. I suspect the answer is yes.

It is not a throwaway snarky comment, it is an explanation by Yishan and Sam of how they hijacked control of a team away from Condé Nast using a similar playbook as Sam is using in recent years + now to seize control of OpenAI.

This is not about celebrities and I have zero interest in celebrity news. This is about ensuring legal and transparent governance of the nonprofit OpenAI which is among the most likely teams in the world to initiate the Singularity and thus either uplift or obliterate humanity. There aren’t any higher stakes than this.

It would be very wonderful if you could please check the data to see if there are some users who consistently flag content about Sam Altman but don’t really flag other stuff very much. Please.

While we’re on the topic of a small clique of users flagging content about Sam Altman, the fact that I’m one of the accounts who consistently posts things exposing his personality and his past has led to my posts being flagged so many times that my account is in a hellban/shadowban status where any posts I make are automatically flagged by default now but do not appear flagged when logged in as me. This doesn’t affect my comments, just my posts. I understand that I’ve had other posts flagged that weren’t about Sam Altman and that I’ve been a borderline annoying user for some time and I apologize for this.

But if you look at the chronological history of my account, you will see that the hellban/shadowban did not start until I started posting things about Sam Altman. I would deeply appreciate if you could please request a review of this status to clear this status from my account because I believe it was deliberately caused by a small group of pro-Sam users flagging things I posted, and amounts to a form of social ostracism.

I appreciate your help and you’re a good man in a crappy situation. None of this is your fault and I’m just trying to raise awareness so that we don’t end up with a potentially greed-motivated, emotionally abusive man at the helm of the Singularity. (Many people who have worked with him have said these things about him.)

Thank you for everything you do for our community and we appreciate you.

[dang]

There's no brigade of users, as far as I can tell, flagging negative things about Sam Altman, and anyway the concern doesn't pass the smoke test because there is tons of negative content about Sam on HN. Just look at the latest thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41665045. The recent discussions are practically bloodbaths. If you're concerned about a shortage of negative content about Sam on HN, you have nothing to worry about. The problem is that most of these extra submissions, like the current one, aren't interesting—they're just piling on to an already hyper-discussed ragefest. HN is supposed to be for intellectually interesting conversation, which that is not.

Since you asked for data, I looked at the flagging histories of all the users who flagged the current submission. There's no particular focus on Sam stories. Here's a representative sample of other things the same users have flagged:

Nardwuar on his best and worst interviews - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41660733 - Sept 2024 (24 comments)

Who is Marcellus Williams: Execution in Missouri despite evidence of innocence - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41646420 - Sept 2024 (441 comments)

Where to join occult for money ritual, call or text and2348088390660 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41623645 - Sept 2024 (0 comments)

Newest social network does not suck - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41406471 - Aug 2024 (9 comments)

Stop Acting Like You're Famous - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40059887 - April 2024 (275 comments)

Study puts fermented foods, not fire, as pivotal moment in human brain growth - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39762588 - March 2024 (220 comments)

Programming, Motherfucker Do you speak it? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39495654 - Feb 2024 (40 comments)

Argentina's Economy Is Screaming at Top of Its Lungs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39490218 - Feb 2024 (44 comments)

A teen's fatal plunge into the London underworld - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39272278 - Feb 2024 (96 comments)

Trump's Mar-a-Lago Raided by FBI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32396642 - Aug 2022 (6 comments)

[upwardbound]

I see; thank you for checking and for this detailed data review.

[meiraleal]

It's on the front page right now, stop being this annoying and let people comment on the thread instead of being all over the place, geez.

[immibis]

And now it's [flagged]

[supriyo-biswas]

I did not downvote your post, but please also note the following from the HN guidelines:

> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email [e-mail] and we'll look at the data.