[maratc]

> the tech billionaires might have a vested interest in making sure stories like this get flagged

Interestingly, this "anyone with an opinion different from mine must be a paid shill" argument doesn't pop quite as often in the discussions about Clovis Culture tools, Roman Empire letters, or pre-Linotype typesetting -- the fact that makes me think that maybe keeping politics out of HN is actually a good thing.

[tastyface]

Meanwhile, America's tech CEOs are gifting the president with gold statues and accompanying him on diplomatic trips.

[maratc]

I don't live in the US so this doesn't quite enrage me, especially since I'm aware that every US president gets tens (hundreds?) of millions of dollars in donations to their election campaigns, so a gold statue does not look like a big deal when compared to that.

[Schmerika]

> "anyone with an opinion different from mine must be a paid shill"

Not remotely what I said. One of the better HN guidelines here is to try and interpret comments you read in the best possible light. I recommend it.

What I actually said is simply correct - there are tech billionaires who do have strong reasons to flag certain topics on HN.

And there's no way to stop them from doing so. We rely solely on 100% opaque moderation to unflag stories.

There's no shortage of people who have complained about how often threads concerning Musk, DOGE, the Lawnmower guy, Thiel, certain genocidal countries etc get wiped from here...

Do you see those threads? Unless you have [showdead] on, and browse /active, almost certainly not... Because they get flagged, and they're not put back. Discussion of how HN's flagging system works - or doesn't - is explicitly banned at the post level. You can only talk about it in comments.

So, no, that isn't just my opinion, or paranoia. And the fact that you don't know how often those stories are unfairly flagged and never put back is actually evidence of the tightness of the blinkers here. It's been crazy this past year - just try looking at my favorites.

[maratc]

Your favourites have tons of "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic" stuff. The fact that so much of it is flagged is a feature of this place, not a bug. This feature is why I keep coming here almost daily for the last 15 years or so.

[Schmerika]

If we weren't heavily complicit in rapidly accelerating fascism, as a direct and immediate outcome of those stories and others like them, then I might agree.

But we are, and I don't. Ignoring those stories as deliberate policy so HNers like yourself can remain impervious to the consequences of our actions is dangerously short sighted.