Users are flagging them. The only thing moderators have done is decline to turn off the flags. We turn off flags sometimes when (a) the article contains significant new information (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...) and (b) it can support a substantive HN discussion. Neither of those seems true here so I don't think it's a hard call.

There have been countless threads on the generic topic here (free speech online, let's call it) and the details of this particular story seem very specific to Reddit drama, indeed (not that I've looked closely) to some specific subreddit. If so, that's neither an interesting new phenomenon nor gratifying of intellectual curiosity (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), so it's not on topic for HN and users have been right to flag these.

if there's an interesting conversation to be had it's about governance and transparency in how online spaces are moderated, given the depth of their influence, the broadness of their reach and the relative power wielded by those who control the platform (hello there!). Unfortunately that conversation is mostly absent from these threads.

That conversation in general has been and continues to be had over and over again on HN, so even if this is a good occasion for substantive discussion (which I doubt), it's not as if there won't be countless opportunities in the future.

The fact that this is being done to cover up the past of a specific person who's an employee of reddit strikes me as novel, weren't the previous examples about much more general topics like covid denial?

It may be novel but I don't see that it's interesting in HN's sense of the word (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). There's a difference between the intensely-interesting quality of sensational, exciting stories, and the intellectually-interesting quality of deeper, more substantive stories. The latter are what HN is supposed to be for.

When I looked in on the discussions that were going on about this last night, they were shockingly bad flamewars about all the expected generic issues, so precisely the kind of thing we don't want here. Everything I've seen so far confirms that this story is an intense drama involving specific individuals (not just the one who shall or shall not be named, but whoever made the decisions that stirred up the outrage) that doesn't have much to teach us in general. Its primary value to HN seems to me as a good example for calibrating where to draw the ontopicness line. A teachable moment, as they used to say.

I think many people don't care about Reddit at all and perceive these discussions as off topic and uninteresting. There are better spaces to discuss those, such as /r/SubredditDrama/.

If this were a new article on the subject, it might fit. But links to Reddit threads while the drama is happening live? To me, that's gossip.

Edit: Disclaimer because that's how it is on the internet, I am transgender. Yet I have never heard of this person before and only learned their gender identity in the comments here. I don't care about Reddit or UK Politics.

Perhaps, but I'm surprised given the level of influence Reddit has these days. Reddit reaches about 500 million people per month, probably more. It's not "just a silly message board" anymore.

They have a comparatively tiny number of employees and those people have a very real power to control narratives. We're seeing just the tiniest glimpse of that here because the employee in question has done so in an incredibly egregious manner. The question this whole incident should raise is "what else is going on, that we haven't yet seen?". The specifics of this particular example are uninteresting.

Not least, this is a site wide action by the staff without regard to subreddit mods.

And it's been done without any transparency at all. That is telling in a larger sphere, even if the details might not be so interesting.

> There are better spaces to discuss those, such as /r/SubredditDrama/.

But see, we can't discuss this there.

The Reddit admins have since then issued a statement saying that the auto-moderator was set too broadly. They have since corrected the issue are are investigating the bans.

Looking at the "other conversations" tab on the linked post displays 12 active conversations. The "rules" as presented on the /r/ukpolitics were speculation by its moderators.

As I said elsewhere, it was pretty much gossip at that point. This is Reddit drama and it should stay there (or at least, until another website reports about it). Linking to live threads is just asking for confusion.

Some threads, before I log out of Reddit until the next drama:

https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/mbeycw/whats_...

https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/mbcls0/ongo...

https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/mbqgx2/a_clarif...

https://www.reddit.com/user/Blank-Cheque/comments/mbmthf/why...

https://old.reddit.com/r/DeclineIntoCensorship/comments/mbe2...

This is absolutely the case.

HN penalises threads that are "too active", as potential flame wars and downranks them automatically. There's also user flagging. I don't think it indicates that HN is specifically taking action against this thread because of who it's about, just the usual automated mechanisms.

This thread has more votes (454 points) than any on the front page apart from number 1 (540 points) with more comments, 205 vs 118 from the top post.

As of now, it seats on the second page at #44.

It's currently flagged and not visible at all

And interestingly, people still upvote this thread, it’s at 563 now.

Now at #93.

Perhaps HN should look into the weight of flagging, judging by #votes, seems like their ranking is not working or perhaps it is and they are happy this is not the top post.

Quite ironical, regardless as Reddit is a YC startup, none the less Paul Graham is the ideator and the post is about paid Reddit staff silencing users.

Edit: Now at 114 on the 4th page...

If you're trying to create a discussion community where the least desirable outcome is controversial discussions/flame wars, high weight on flagging seems to be a good way to do it.

Of course, people flagging it might be thinking all kinds of things like "Why would a topic about what Reddit does be important here?"

#128 for me now

Isn't this orthogonal to anything about that persons gender status? It should be possible to have a discuss and ban any comments that would normally be banned around gender status or more specific around this persons gender status?

Are we not capable of having a reasonable discussion around a person and their actions just because of this?

Yeah it's nothing to do with their gender status, but someone reading those threads now might draw the conclusion that the stories were flagged or penalised due to the transphobia, which is not the case - the penalty came before the hate.

HN appears to do some shady stuff too... sometimes it is users flagging post (like a mega-downvote) and sometimes it is the admins controlling the speech.

I'm not sure why HN needs flagging and down-votes... because flagging is being abused all the time (and I think that some users get super-heavy-flagging-powers, a bit like low level admins).

I’ve always wanted to see on HN a public audit trail of all moderator modified, or removed posts and comments. That would give greater transparency and might prevent moderators enforcing their own beliefs and norms. Then again the counter argument, or point, is that HN won’t do that because it could open mods to greater pressure, unless it’s actually corporate policy to control the narrative.

Any other reasons why HN wouldn’t publish a public audit trail?

Without all the information you're still left with a lot of mystery. I might ban an account, for seemingly nothing, because I can see they've created 15 accounts in the last two days to troll and stir shit up. Partial information seems to create as many, if not more, conspiracies than no information.

Moderating large social systems is tricky.

I think any action done can be noted to that effect, but a step towards transparency should be a goal, because over time and interaction that “mystery” cold be solved. Wikipedia records all changes for review, with such an erudite crowd behind HN, it would seem trivial to establish such a system.

Flagging is the least bad system I’ve seen so far. HN can be configured to show flagged or dead posts as well so it doesn’t really compare.

Does the admin(s) need to do anything to hide a post when a post has been flagged by users or it is automatically hidden?

It's automatic. If enough users flag a post, it gets "killed" and will only show up (with the tag "[flagged][dead]") if you have the "showdead" option enabled in your profile.

It's automatically hidden.

I don't think it's an awful system but I don't think it's exactly right for HN - in normal operations it works fairly well but when combined with some less desirable HN stereotypes it can just involve shutting down discussion one disagrees with (e.g. merely mentioning Donald Trump by name was an insta flag during the election, but you could always get away with worse if you talked about democrats because the average user is further right than most forums)

I think most of us automatically downvote or flag anything political regardless of personal politics. Especially US presidential politics, because that's what the uninteresting parts of the internet are for.

It is completely false that a bias doesn't come into play with political content.

It is not necessarily a bad thing, but some users appear to have been given more power and can shut down those articles more quickly.

The least bad system is far more transparent.

HN's moderation system is rather susceptible to brigading. Downvotes will flow like water to certain topics, regardless of the quality of the original post or the discussion therein.

Bots have effective veto power over every story.

HN users are flagging it, checkout the previous threads for more comments on why.

> HN is also penalising threads that discuss this.

Yes, HN tends to punish more-heat-than-light topics that overlap with perennial divise political/culture war issues.

Oh wow, and now it’s flagged.

If there are Reddit employees on HN that, for example, would cause threads like this to get buried, that should be looked into.

What do you think is the probability of dang not being aware of this third post today on this issue?

He certainly can unflag it and lock it that way if he wished.

I mean, just look at how emotionally charged the top comment threads have become after this got posted. It isn't exactly a topic that can be discussed when so many people can't hold themselves to the basic rules (be nice and polite, attack the idea not the person, etc.) and things devolve to "you're a bigot! / no, I'm not a bigot!".

This thread has now been disappeared from the frontpage as well.

5th page now.