[joseppudev]

It does look like awful lot of gaslighting to paint her as mentally ill. some quick web search showed she is the black sheep of the family. and she seem to exhibit behaviors r-pe victims commonly do like using sexuality to empower themselves (having an active onl-fans account) and such.

Just like in Lavinia Woodward's case. Success sometimes gives you this kind of privilege to bypass justice. The dupe thread seems to have been flagged and this thread might be flagged as well. Not hard to see what is going on tbh.

[martin-t]

Honest question: why do you censor the word rape?

I skimmed HN's FAQ and I see no mention of forbidden topics or words and it seems the mod team prides itself on openness (does not make it true, i know). Do you believe your comment or your account would face negative consequences for using that word?

[dang]

There's no problem with plain language about rape or other topics on HN. Plain language is preferable.

The issue here is not whether people are allowed to use specific words, it's whether the story gratifies intellectual curiosity, as the site guidelines require for a story to be on topic (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). The community verdict, arrived at via the standard tug-of-war between upvotes and flags, is that it does not. Some users are unhappy with that and are seeing it not as a community verdict, but as suspicious behavior by the mods.

I think the solution is for us to explain what is happening, what users did and what we did, and what the underlying principles are. If past experience is any guide, this won't satisfy all of the suspicions, but it will help with some of them, and it will satisfy the bulk of the community, which is the most that can be hoped for.

[joseppudev]

Internet is getting worse every day, who knows what kind of censorship they are or will be using. Maybe it isn't necessary to censor the word here but still good as kind of a trigger discipline I guess.

[martin-t]

Why would it work though?

If somebody wants to actually detect and censor talking about rape, they certainly have the technological capability to also censor all the intentional misspellings.

IMO, the only case when this works is when an organization is censoring it because of compliance but intentionally does a minimal effort at it.

[cybercity]

It is not the rape that traumatizes the victims it is the bystanders not stopping it. And yes everyone knows what is going on. Parents not protecting their children is the deepest form of damage.

[tyleo]

I was seeing this on the front page of HN mere moments ago and now it’s gone.

[dang]

That's what happens when upvotes put a story on the front page and then user flags take it off the front page. This is standard stuff. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42639323 and the other links there.

[DoctorOetker]

Just out of curiosity

if more people downvote / individual flag it than upvote it, then how did it rise to the front page to start with?

I recall multiple HN Epstein discussions that didn't get flagged (in the sense of Net Flagged status assignment by HN, not talking about individual acts of individual flagging)

It would really help the discourse if HN used separate terms for the button for users to individually cast a flag, and the [flagged] marking by HN: a suggestion would be to give the latter a different word like [perverse], as the literal meaning of perverse come from Latin "per" (away) "vertere" (to turn), i.e. "turned away" or "to turn a blind eye" as one would say in English.

That would seem more apt as it describes what is done, and allows HN commenters to talk about the difference between individual acts of users pressing the "flag" button versus HN mapping that to an attention modulating action.

For example discussions about the method of mapping upvotes, views, flaggings, and their relative timing distributions, onto the either "attended" or "perverse" status.

[dang]

I'm afraid I don't understand that second part of your comment - it's not clear to me what distinction you're wanting to appear in the UI. But I can answer this part:

> if more people downvote / individual flag it than upvote it, then how did it rise to the front page to start with?

It's because most of the flags only happen later. Upvotes get a post onto the frontpage, then other users see it on the frontpage and think "wtf? that doesn't belong on HN" and flag it. This is especially common with sensational or outrageous stories, since those qualities inevitably attract upvotes—but then later they attract flags. You can think of flags as a bit like an immune system in that sense.

[4oo4]

Unlike other stories critical of Sam Altman, it's very suspicious the way this is so quickly and systematically downvoted and flagged every single time it's posted.

This happened the last time this was posted too. Sam Altman deserves the right to defend himself in court as does Ann to tell her story (who personally I believe).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37785072

The good news is that with the lawsuit it will be in the news more and much harder to silence, maybe at some point we can have a proper discussion about it on HN without people (or more likely bots) trying to memoryhole it every single time.

[leotravis10]

Amen, hopefully someday we can get a proper civil discussion on this. Shame on the HN mods and higher ups really for trying to censor this.

[dang]

The mods haven't done anything. This story is being flagged by users and, after looking at the data, I believe it's a genuine community response. (Edit: here's comment I just ran across, which expresses some of this response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42638174).

More here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42637131

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42637022

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42632335

[spockswrench]

You have a vested interest to protect Sam Altman and sure enough this story is not allowed on the front page. This site has many forms of censorship built in, yet you always act with plausible deniability, blaming "the users" or worse yet "the algorithm" (as if that's not fully in your control). I hope you know that most people aren't buying it.

[dang]

Not blaming, just explaining what is happening. You're of course free to believe what you wish, but I think you're wrong about "most people". The bulk of the community is satisfied with what we're doing. How do I know that? Because if it weren't the case, we'd never hear the end of it. I've been on the wrong side of the community in the past, I know what that's like, and this isn't it. Being on the wrong side of the community is such a painful experience that striving to avoid that is basically the principle that drives how we operate HN.

As for Sam: this site has hosted countless negativity fests about Sam (as well as other celebrities people love to post about). This story is different, and the way we're handling it would be the same if you replaced his name with anyone else's.

[krapp]

I wouldn't even blame it on the mods and higher ups. There are enough people here invested in Sam Altman either through YC or AI that mutually aligned interests alone will cause a story like this to get squashed, every time. No conspiracy needed.

And that doesn't even take into account the number of people who consider all discussions of this kind to be categorically off topic, and would flag it on principle regardless of the context.

[4oo4]

If you do a search for the word rape, there are tons of discussions about it, so it's definitely not categorically off topic. I'm going to email [e-mail] per the FAQ since the way this keeps happening feels abusive and against the spirit of HN.

[krapp]

As far as I know, flags come from the community, not the mods. Hacker News is designed so that it doesn't even take many flags to affect a thread.

You can complain to the mods all you like but there's nothing you can do about the zeitgeist. The mods also won't change their own policies.

[joseppudev]

This is democracy and freedom we get these days.

and yup... the thread is gone.

[dang]

There's nothing new in the HN community functioning this way. In fact, it's because the HN community functions this way that the site exists at all; otherwise it would have long ago turned into just another current affairs or celebrity gossip page.

[martin-t]

I am increasingly convinced we need to separate content storage from recommendation algorithms.

When an organization does both, it has perverse incentives such as maximizing add-profit or user-engagement by building echo chambers instead of doing what benefits the users - such as maximizing truth-seeking and getting an accurate picture of opinions among the general population.

[joseppudev]

Agreed. I am quite pessimistic about what can be achieved though.

[tyleo]

Cheers, at least we have Stimulation Clicker on the front page

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42611536

[raxxor]

That is a worrying amount of conjecture about something nobody knows anything about in any direction.