[dang]

It wasn't about Israel, and it didn't get deleted.

It got flagkilled for obviously breaking the site guidelines. Killed posts remain visible to users who have 'showdead' turned on in their profile. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

[ebbi]

Why are you deleting comments from people asking you about actions you're taking?

Ironic, given the topic of this post....

[dang]

I have done no such thing. We only ever delete comments outright when the author asks us to (and even then, not always). Otherwise the most we ever do is kill a comment, and such comments remain visible to anyone who wants to turn on the profile setting I just mentioned.

[rrhjm53270]

Ironic

[dang]

I'm guessing that you mean this is political censorship?

If that is what you mean, then I wonder what political position you think has been censored in this case.

[ebbi]

It was about Israel, unless you're referring to another comment that was deleted.

[dang]

I'm talking about https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48188180.

[ebbi]

All I see is

>[stub for offtopicness]

But it was very much on topic.

[ViktorRay]

If you go to your profile in the top right and toggle “Show Dead”, you will be able to see those moderated comments.

Once you do that, you can see the comment in the link that dang posted.

Anyway it’s good that comment was moderated. The commentator didn’t say anything about Israel. He was clearly being hostile towards Jewish people in a “subtle” way that very clearly isn’t really subtle to anyone.

[ebbi]

[flagged]

[lyu07282]

Who is they? There are plenty of anti-zionist jews, you are making the argument "they" want you to make don't be fooled man

[nohell]

It absolutely was about Israel. Stop lying.

[dang]

If you meant Israel you would have said Israel. Instead you said "God's chosen people" which was a (presumably sarcastic, and certainly flamebaity) reference to Jews.

Principled criticism of Israel is fine. There have been a great many such posts on HN. Religious and/or ethnic flamebait is not fine. This is not a difficult distinction, and anyone who is posting in good faith should have no difficulty making it.

Your comment broke the site guidelines in other ways as well.

[ebbi]

Yet you leave blatantly Islamophobic comments in another thread untouched.

Nice work.

[dang]

We moderate anti-Islamic flamewar posts exactly as we do other religious flamewar posts. I dug up a few examples for you below. There are others, but this should be more than enough to persuade any fair-minded reader:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40747009 (June 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40746973 (June 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38623290 (Dec 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27534558 (June 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25319171 (Dec 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18080981 (Sept 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14116279 (April 2017)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13647198 (Feb 2017)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13286221 (Dec 2016)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11669863 (May 2016)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11518006 (April 2016)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11340026 (March 2016)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10897270 (Jan 2016)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10590568 (Nov 2015)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10564079 (Nov 2015)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9992931 (Aug 2015)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8008392 (July 2014)

As you can see, these go back over a decade and in fact for as long as I've been doing this job.

The mistake in your comment is the assumption that we see everything that gets posted to HN. We don't come close—there is far too much for that to be possible. I'd be surprised if mods see even 10% of what gets posted to HN.

Since we can't moderate what we don't see, we rely on users to bring egregious posts to our attention. If you'd like to be helpful in the future, you'd be welcome to send us links so we can take a look.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

[throwawaypath]

Your antisemitism is showing. The comment doesn't mention Israel whatsoever.