Most of the time, and only if you have show dead enabled, you will see that dead comments are that way for a reason. They are low quality, nonsense bots, etc. Very, very rarely do I see a dead comment that represents some well thought counter argument.
It's also easy to confuse the flag link as a downvote. It absolutely is not that. If a person abuses the flag button too much, the flag button gets taken away from them. I should know, it happened to me years ago. I was quite judicious with the flag button because my default behavior from digg/reddit/youtube was to downvote things I disagreed with, didn't like, or thought was of low value.
So it was taken away for a couple of years. I've since gotten the flag button back and today I only use it for what its supposed to be used for.
Case in point, here are the currently dead comments on this post (asterisks are my own on that last one):
"I know I’m shadowbanned but I hope you see my crap, Dang."
"Jesus H Christ"
"It's called "feet" bcuz it's done mainly with the foots :D"
"Just go to the point and ask him if you can suck his d***"
Unless, of course, the topic at hand happens to be a hot issue in the US. At which point anything outside the established narratives (the propaganda) bites the dust almost immediately.
For example I have posted and debated a little about my counter-narrative opinions on "the covid response" here before and had them stay and even gather the occasional upvote, to their credit. But it is also extremely easy to get moderated when walking that line, and likely highly dependent on whether or not the users participating or reading the comments become upset by what they see. This is not just a case of covid in general being an off topic or controversial issue, because you could post until the cows come home about the Covid response if you were cheerleading and parroting the schizophrenic and ever-changing position of western governments and media.
I give them credit at least, I think what they have is better than a lot of places for such debate. You just have to know your place and be extremely careful and polite and factual when you deviate, and you have to be prepared at some point the conversation will be shut down if it is upsetting and angering other users.
I also like that deleted comments can be made visible, another really good transparent part about the moderation. I do agree there is a lot of junk, but it's nice to see what's verboten. I assume posts can be nuked entirely with no trace , I give the benefit of the doubt and hope that's used sparingly.
My biggest issue is the unavoidable US centrism. Again, much better than what's out there, but it's absolutely real. Real talk gets stuck down immediately for being inflammatory
I've noticed that I have to shy away from certain ways of expression when I say things critical of a US-positive narrative. I have to avoid "real talk" as it were. It's kinda frustrating because that's how I prefer to speak but I can also see a difference in the discussion that ensues.
I feel you though. It can be pretty tough when you say something genuinely concerning, which people don't like thinking about, only to have it dismissed with the downvote button. Still, oftentimes such things gain more points while I'm sleeping and seemingly people in other parts of the world view my comments (which I think is kinda telling; it's what it is).
(For context, I am a born US citizen.)
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=whataboutism%20by:dang&dateRan...
Whataboutism […] denotes in a pejorative sense a procedure in which a critical question or argument is not answered or discussed, but retorted with a critical counter-question which expresses a counter-accusation. From a logical and argumentative point of view it is considered a variant of the tu-quoque [1] pattern, which is a subtype of the ad-hominem [2] argument.
[1] Attacking the arguer for hypocrisy.
[2] Attacking the arguer rather than the argument.
If you find yourself accused of whataboutism it tends to mean you’re engaged in political rhetoric rather than intelligent focussed debate - which is fine, but not (as far as I understand it) what HNs is for.
What I'm saying is that accusations of "whataboutism" are the sort of canned argument we want to avoid on HN, as well as an internet trope (which we also want to avoid), a shallow dismissal (which the site guidelines ask to avoid) and a form of name-calling (ditto).
It's also a logical fallacy, since pointing out a contradiction via a comparable situation is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. No doubt people do sometimes bring up comparable situations in unhelpful, irrelevant ways, but if so, it needs to be explained how—not met with a lazy label like "whataboutism", which is a blanket that can smother a good argument just as well as a bad one.
Btw, internet users are orders-of-magnitude too quick to jump to the conclusion that they're dealing with "disinformation campaigns" and that sort of thing. As far as I can tell, most of the time they're just encountering other, equally disgruntled internet users who happen to have the opposing view of a topic and feel just as strongly about it. But even if it's a sinister campaigner masquerading as a disgruntled internet user, the solution is still what I described in the previous paragraph. That's the only thing that can work in the long run.
There's another, highly underrated and effective way to respond, though, and that is to simply ignore it and walk away. Responding to these things feeds them. If people would simply starve bad information/arguments of attention, they would fizzle out.
The firehose of bullshit makes responding to every bad argument untenable. It's a DDoS of online discussion. Making a counterargument is one strategy against toxic and harmful online content, but it's not the only one and not always an effective or appropriate one.
>That's the only thing that can work in the long run.
The only thing that works in the long run is removing and banning those who engage (knowingly or otherwise) in disinformation distribution.
> There's another, highly underrated and effective way to respond, though, and that is to simply ignore it and walk away. Responding to these things feeds them.
This is demonstrably false. As a particularly bad example, Rwanda learned this one the hard way. Russia wants Ukraine to lose popular support - if that happens many more innocent people will die than would otherwise. Ignoring the guy on the radio who tries to make others question you and wants to cause you harm will not prevent the machete from slicing you open.
>If people would simply starve bad information/arguments of attention, they would fizzle out.
They get even less attention when the material is removed and the user reasonable prevented from spreading more of it. This isn't high school debate club, it's a nation-state that wants to kill its neighbor's civilians.
People highlight instances of whataboutism to inform others and to point it out to moderators. Punishing them for doing that is clearly the objectively wrong thing to do.
Usually when people post things that they know are against the majority view, they compensate by adding extra invective or vitriol into their post. Then the post gets flagged or moderated, but because of the invective/vitriol, not because it's a minority view. It's not easy to find a way out of this dynamic but I think it's the most common case.
Past explanations about this:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
That leaves me the option of not saying anything, getting modded down/flagged for pointing out blatant hypocrisy, or spending an hour crafting a long-winded comment that is either murky enough to confuse possible down votes, or clearly boils down to the simple controversial statement that many don't like, at which point it bites the dust anyway. So, where's the incentive to do better?
In my experience, the "vitriol" usually comes the above dynamic plays for the nth time, which is the opposite of what you are saying.
Maybe you are unable to recognise this because it appeals to your own biases. Or maybe you do but it simply suits you. Either way, I am not entirely convinced that I should take your opinions at face value and assume good faith no matter what.
I believe a word was missed out at a crucial point so I'm also struggling with the point. (The caps are for clarity with my request, not some kind of slap down! I'm genuinely interested).
Not always but mostly, I'd say.
But with topics where there is a media and government wide push against ‘desinformation’ like during COVID, a statement like ‘two weeks to stop the spread doesn’t work’ or ‘the vaccines will not end the pandemic’ the hivemind medical science parrots will very swiftly act to kill and bury this dissent under the proscribed talking points. And yes, that is frustrating and causes crass reactions.
Especially the pandemic really has opened my eyes to a very significant weakness in our society, media, governance and scientific institutions and in the general common sense of the population and its willingness to be manipulated. And it reflects in this site. And it’s not limited to COVID, there are many topics that are just untouchable like most of Woke.
That is not a criticism of the moderation team, it’s on the people who vote on comments and I don’t have a solution either. Personally I just don’t care about the points and try to remain reasonably distant to avoid becoming toxic.
I've (almost) stopped posting those kinds of replies, because it's just too easy to shut down conversations that go against the common narrative/view.
On the other hand, when people have taken the time to argue logically with me on some unpopular opinion, I've had meaningful back and forth. Sometimes I've even changed my mind.
It's a loss, that for many people being "right" is more important than having meaningful and potentially enlightening conversation that benefits everyone.
Let's argue the ideas, not the ideology they're supposed to be attached to.
This is still the internet, there is a lot of spam, trolling and malicious people.
An unmoderated space doesn't last very long.
But I knwo this is never going to happen because it's too transparent and welcoming diverse opinions and you could suddenly see all those anonymous internet heroes.
I think the more upvotes something gets the less ability for downvotes to bury it, if the ratio is close. People always post things that are majority-liked because even something slightly disliked more than liked will bury it.
Like rust - I gave it a whirl, didn’t like it, think it’s overrated. Mention that here and it’s like you tried to shoot the Pope.
Is it? Find any thread about COVID-19, the opinions are staggeringly on the left.
I can come up with more examples. If you can't see the left lean you're more than likely part of it.
I find those threads tend to be dominated by people who believe vaccinations are fascism, masks don't work and Fauci and Biden cooked up COVID in Hunter's meth lab, which is currently a solidly right-wing stance. Elsewhere there are commenters calling transgendered people mentally ill pedophile groomers, or homosexuality a sin and threat to human survival, claiming systemic racial and gender bias is scientifically justified, insisting that certain races and religions, or states of the Union, simply cannot coexist, still calling Biden's election stolen, worshiping the glory of war in turning soft men hard and the purity of the free market in weeding the weak and lazy out of society, and ranting about wokist CRT cultural Marxists burning the world down.
I think the bias you see here really depends on what threads you tend to read, what you tend to notice (which is probably more often than not what you disagree with,) and who shows up first to ruin them.
It's funny because you're describing a microcosm of comments as if they are the majority, and ignoring legitimate critiques. I can't say I'm surprised your knee-jerk reaction is to defend the echo chamber, but here we are. Thanks for proving my point so quickly!
When did I ever claim what I was describing was the majority? The entire point of my comment was to point out that bias is relative. Of course what I was describing is a microcosm. So is the "left wing bias" you described upthread. Hacker News consists of numerous microcosms. Of course you only consider one side to be an echo chamber, and yours to be "legitimate critiques." Which apparently I'm ignoring, despite you not having provided any, of anything. So it goes.
I won't belabor the point because I suspect most of the effort you put into my comment went into copying and pasting it.
When you said "I find those threads tend to be dominated by people who believe..."
> Of course what I was describing is a microcosm
Now you're contradicting yourself. Something that dominates cannot be described as a microcosm of the whole.
The left bias I describe _is_ what dominates most threads here. You can act like something doesn't exist, but it's not going to disappear from reality.
>For me, you disqualify your comment by using 'This.' and by using strong words that are borderline insults. To 'non-progressives' it may look like dissenting comments are downvoted but my guess is that people are just protecting the non-aggressive spirit of the site. HN needs far more moderation resources if the discourse descends into aggressive territory. To discuss controversial topics, non-mainstream arguments should be written as non-aggressively as OP's argument about overtone windows.
I am sure that without aggression, fair discussions about controversial topics can be held on HN. What I miss is a path to pass the knowledge about how to argue. My guess is that dang doesn't message korroziya and no user can reach him. People like korroziya learn to 'hold back'.
It's more like passive-aggresive here. It's also harder to tell signal from noise if someone has to write a 500-word essay instead of saying "you're an idiot".
Stuff like "It's so strange and puzzling to see someone act illogically when the reasoning is so obvious."
It's basically calling someone a dumbass^,
It's almost like the rules are fostering an environment of self-censorship.
What I think should be legal to say is hard statements. Like, "You're wrong." Or "what you said doesn't make sense. " You need these statements to express disagreement and I think spending effort to make it polite just derails the conversation for the sake of being polite.
But passive aggressiveness with the intent to refocus the subject of the conversation onto the speaker himself is a deliberate act of malice. That should be flagged.
The echo chamber is hard to miss when you see it, but it's pretty remarkable how rosy tinted some users view the site. Censorship exists in a real way here, and it suppresses the flow of information and ideas.
Meta moderation could deal with these users more effectively. Take points from their precious reputation and ultimately take away their moderation rights in case of repeat offenders.
The second sub-thread (for me) is often much more interesting.
I also observed that it looks like there are two "waves" of commentators, the first one has a pack mentality, if they don't like what they see they downvote instead of discussing.
The second "wave" often upvote what was previously downvoted (and it helps that an algorithm removes the downflag button past a few days).
I very rarely see dead comments that did not deserve it (including occasionally my own), and I see all of them in the threads I read. Do you have any example?
> On any topic, there is an acceptable HN Overton window of acceptable opinions and it skews very Silicon Valley.
Reasonably constructed comments can be downvoted, but are very rarely hidden. And the tone of the community varies dramatically depending on the story and its subject. HN is not a homogenous hive mind.
However, I put as much effort in those comments as I do in any other ones, as none of it is trolling or just attempts to be edgy, the comments try to fully abide by HN guidelines.
With that in mind, I have never gotten flagged (unless i missed it somehow), despite definitely being downvoted for "unpopular" opinions before (especially in hot-topic US politics adjacent threads). I know that's just a sample size of 1, of course, and I don't doubt there are some who got flagged unjustly. But from my personal experience, it doesn't seem like a common scenario.
There was this recent doozey https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34707305