Ask HN: What's with flagging articles criticizing Musk?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42907426

by lnkl • 1 year ago

55 29 1 year ago

news.ycombinator.com

Can someone explain what is going on with this? Some recent examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42904200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42903336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42895453

palmfacehn2• 1 year ago

I didn't flag those articles. Discussions of Musk devolve into partisan hyperbole. I'm indifferent on him generally. Many of the discussions become unhinged and absurd. When I attempt to illustrate how extreme some of the hyperbole is, my own comments are generally flagged or downvoted into oblivion. Those who make extreme claims without substance are celebrated. This suggests that a reasonable discussion is not possible on some of these contentious topics.

I also understand that the HN algo has a feature where flamewar-esque threads can trigger flagging of the entire article.

pvg6• 1 year ago

I also understand that the HN algo has a feature where flamewar-esque threads can trigger flagging of the entire article.

It doesn't but there's automatic downweighting which is not flagging. Flagging is something people do.

pvg6• 1 year ago

You can mail such questions to hn@ycombinator.com although this one has been addressed in some of the recent mod comments.

The reason such things get flagged has less to do with Musk but with the fact that HN isn't really a current events/news discussion site. It's porous - some things are big and/or interesting enough to get front page coverage but the tick tock of everyday news stories is mostly offtopic and people tend to enforce that with their flags.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42901248

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42901317

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42896490

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42776410

mikequinlan• 1 year ago

Hacker News Guidelines

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

"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

zfg6• 1 year ago

So much of the tech industry is now precisely about politics and power.

Hacker News cannot be afraid to look at it, cannot run away from it, and, if you're part of the tech industry, must take responsibility for it.

pvg6• 1 year ago

Most things are in some way connected to politics and power and they're regularly discussed here, along with their political implications and power dynamics. That still doesn't mean every news story is worth discussing here given that it's a forum with the explicit goal of not discussing most news stories.

dang• 1 year ago

Note those words most and probably.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922426

lawn• 1 year ago

USA turning into a Russian style oligarchy fits neatly in the "interesting new phenomenon".

rsynnott• 1 year ago

I mean, it does seem that Musk stories get flagged way more rapidly than other Trump misbehaviour stories; in practice I suspect that a certain amount of the user base is comprised of his weird sycophants.

bambax• 1 year ago

unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon

I guess the second coming of Nazism to an unprecedented scale and without any serious opposition anywhere is 1/ uninteresting and 2/ absolutely irrelevant to tech.

jjgreen• 1 year ago

Enough already with the "Musk is a Nazi" schtick. He can't be; they made decent cars.

belter2• 1 year ago

Underrated comment....

belter2• 1 year ago

It's about Musk but also SpaceX now controlling the US finances...

"Elon Musk staff has been caught installing drives inside the OPM office":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42903499

"Elon Musk's DOGE reportedly gained "full access" to the federal payment system":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42902670

ChrisArchitect• 1 year ago

As said elsewhere about aversion to some current events topics etc, it's also not entirely flagging off the face of the earth. In some of those examples you shared, they had a hundred upvotes and numerous comments - that's not nothing. That's hundreds of ppl that saw the story and/or engaged, before maybe the discussion devolved leading to more flagging. Other examples with high activity current event stories are just duplicates and there are other submissions of the same/similar story that are getting eyeballs (and maybe also eventually being flagged but they're there anyway). Stuff moves fast around here, but all is not lost.

lenova• 1 year ago

The irony that this post is now flagged as well...

dredmorbius• 1 year ago

1. HN's readers perform most of the site moderation, directly through votes, flags, and vouches, and indirectly through discussions on posts. Somewhat counterintuitively, posts which gather a high number of comments may get penalised if comments exceed votes, by an automated "flamewar detector" heuristic. This (and flags) can be turned off by HN's mods if requested. Such requests (and other meta / moderation questions) are best directed by email to hn@ycombinator.com. See guidelines here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42922791>. More: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>.

2. There are a few additional automated adjustments, most notably site penalties and "Major Ongoing Topics" (MOCs) which attract a large number of submission may also have a penalty applied. Frequently dang will make mention of this, though you can email queries as well. See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011>.

3. Where mods do get actively involved, it's generally to reverse or disable such automated actions, or user-applied flags. The automated systems work well most but not all of the time. (It's taken me some time, and a fair bit of analysis of HN, to reach this conclusion. The system's not perfect, but it's pretty good.)

4. On account of 1) above, there are topics which HN has difficulty discussing reasonably, and many of those are political. Generally, if a topic strongly divides a large fraction of readers, you'll find that posts and many comments tend to get flagged and/or downvoted (comments only). If you suspect this is abusive or is preventing cogent points from getting made, email mods.

Keep in mind too that there may be people who find any discussion of Musk on HN to be tedious and flag on that basis. Reading intent on flagging is at best a highly approximate pastime.

Ask HN: What's with flagging articles criticizing Musk?

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