[SV_BubbleTime]

>and city-sized geographical subs.

lol. No. Every city sub is the EXACT same far left lunatic that needs to make everything about politics. Doesn’t matter if it’s a purple area, red, and reasonable-blue areas far reflected as bizarro versions of themselves if you go off their city reddits.

You may not notice depending on your perspective.

[dredmorbius]

It's not just leftists. It's polarization generally, with scale.

The mid-range views leave. The extremes remain. Often a sub / moderator bias selects for one polar extreme or another.

This is where HN's (generally) political-neutral moderator stance, maddening as it often is to both sides (see dang's many, many, many, many comments on perceived bias), seems to have largely succeeded. Neither side dominates, and the middle isn't excluded.

[inigyou]

HN definitely removes political extreme views.

[dredmorbius]

Almost always by user flags rather than moderation removal, no?

[inigyou]

Automated removal by user flags is itself a moderation decision.

[dredmorbius]

Late reply: I'd intended to write "moderator removal", in the comment you're replying to.

That's a subtle but IMO meaningful distinction: HN's net moderation activity (participants, automated mechanisms, moderators) is not necessarily the same as that which occurs by staff moderators (admins) themselves, and much of the staff moderator activity is actually correcting for participant votes and flags.

This may be an overly fine point, but it seems worth pointing out. Particularly as any moderation system has its biases. But as I'd noted in my earlier reply(<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49021366>), what HN achieves is a reduction in polarized commentary across the political spectrum, to an extent few other platforms have managed to accomplish. People on either side of multiple political divides seem to find bias against their own view, when the reality seems more likely that there's just not a wholehearted embrace of their perspective.

(That's largely my own take as well, though I think I've also become more skilled at presenting my arguments, and that perhaps as a consequence they're better received. I see disagreement, but fairly often support, even when arguing against what seems to be a prevalent or even majority opinion.)

[dredmorbius]

What HN's net moderation system does (user flags, automated moderation, direct admin-moderator actions, shadowbans, penalties) is limit all extreme views, to the extent that they conflict with HN's Prime Directive, "to optimize for intellectual curiosity": <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27901918>.

As I've pointed out repeatedly, the net bias created is less left/right than pro status quo: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...>.

Challenges to conventional thinking are more than fair, but they've got to avoid falling foul of one of HN's guidelines, particularly increasing substantiality with time, thoughtful criticism, generic negativism, not fulminating, no personal attacks, not sneering (including at the rest of the community), good faith, responding to the strongest plausible interpretation of your interlocutor, avoiding flamebait / generic tangents / Internet tropes. And most importantly in this vein, not using HN for political or ideological battle (including nationalistic flamewars).

<https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

As to flags: mods do frequently reverse them for both posts and comments: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45353896> <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...>.

I don't always agree with mods, but I often do, and even where I disagree, I understand the underlying principles being employed. I've been an active critic / commentator on moderation for much of my time on-site (dating to 2011).

[unethical_ban]

Moderation exists. That's not novel. Do you think it shouldn't?

[gs17]

Exactly, for example, there's often two subreddits which are polarized in opposite directions, which unfortunately doesn't make it any easier to figure out the reality than if it was purely left-wing discourse allowed.

[SoftTalker]

Certainly describes my local city sub.

[unethical_ban]

Different subs have it to different extents. The Texas sub was taken over last year by a left wing mod that made everything not merely a Daily Beast repost machine, but barely about Texas. They were finally removed to the pleasure of pretty much everyone.

Every sub has its far right trolls and agitators, too. Bots that respond automatically to any post with certain keywords in the title will lure accounts that have never posted there before, celebrating heinous things and trying to get a rise out of people. Pathetic attempts at destroying decency by celebrating murders by the government.

You may not notice depending on your perspective.