Because to a certain group of HN regulars everything that gives them a tingle in the conscience is "offtopic" and "politics". Another quieter group believe themselves to be the rational Übermensch and cannot wait for the vagrants and the spooky pinky haired leftists to be put on camps.
The site is getting inundated with bots. For the past few months everytime I realize some poster I’m replying to is looping in replies or having gaping holes in logic, I check their account and it’s been made in the past few months and the early interactions it had were with other accounts made in the same pattern.
Then you also see shit like these posts that touch on the admin in a negative light getting insta flagged and nuked off the front page.
Don’t put blinders on. The problem isn’t new accounts (who can’t even flag). This community has always been subtly in favor of exactly this kind of suppression. Consider the fact that posting anything even slightly critical of YC on the YC subreddit gets one instantly shadowbanned. Then consider that this very community is modded by the same ilk of people.
What would you expect? The same kind of censorship, right? This is by design. The design can obviously be changed (e.g. don’t let only echochambery high karma accounts vouch for stuff).
I agree with the bad faith downvoting existing, there’s always been a trend on here of certain people thinking it’s tech related and good when it makes them money and political and bad if it loses them money along with several other biases, but the the pattern of new accounts boosting each other and then throwing their narratives around has super charged ever since LLMs became widespread.
I am increasingly losing any desire for anonymous speech due to how much of my time ends up getting wasted talking to GPUs someone configured to throw more noise into the discourse
Downvoting is an issue sometimes yes but I understand that.
Flagging on the other hand to me on a post as such and other attempts genuinely sadden me because I was only able to discover this flagged post because people wrote about this article in the post I built which has also promptly got flagged.
I don't even know how else to say but I saw two people here in such discussions either worry about their wives or sons in laws and my heart goes out to them. Hackernews is a vast place but its still niche compared to tech giants, we are a community mostly built around each other and curiosity. Curiosity goes to dumpster fire if events like these happen and B) they are flagged by the same community we all think to be a part of.
I have been a vocal supporter of hackernews usually. Because I like the website but I am genuinely seeing it crack and you really never know what can get flagged because I genuinely didn't expect such posts to be flagged because of how valuable they are. I can't fathom why Hackernews might do this, When I had posted the comment it wasn't intended to be political but rather just a massive news development which impacts technological and actual people and geopolitics and I wanted people to discuss it in here on Hackernews for as so, give insights and have discussions.
Perhaps I am feeling hurt and that's because I am because "et tu brute hackernews?"
I then discovered that news.ycombinator.com/active (from one of the comments here, thank you c42) which can still show flagged posts.
I didn't know about the /active and I have been in this community for quite a long time and I didn't know that /active could show flagged posts so I am probably gonna create a tell HN about it
Sharing my sympathies to anyone who is troubled & personally impacted over this recent development. I hope humanity unites together and works for a more affordable & better future for the average person. Peace and hugs.
Edit: looks like someone already posted about news.ycombinator.com/active 5 days ago and so my attempt of post redirected to them but its all good
>Flagging on the other hand to me on a post as such and other attempts genuinely sadden me because I was only able to discover this flagged post because people wrote about this article in the post I built which has also promptly got flagged.
I find that annoying myself. However, at the suggestion of another user, I began looking at https://news.ycombinator.com/active instead of the front page.
The "active" page (as its name implies) includes the most active discussions regardless of whether or not they've been flagged.
I find it to be a much better place to find stuff to discuss.
On top of these methods, I will often surface content and discussion by looking at:
- the search page for the last 24H, with a list of both "title" keywords and "comment" keywords, based on how many results are appearing
- the comment histories of folks I have enjoyed.
I do this by modifying the query string in the URL field.
I am quite glad that these modes of finding content on the site take a little effort- I already have a 180min time out and it's not the healthiest way to try and find my news. This is, fortunately, the only social media site I am actively writing responses on, other than some message boards.
And I don't try to book mark my way through those keywords- I just have a set of stuff I find in comment threads I find interesting memorized and look for those threads ("measles", "salvador", "venazuela", "flock").
But I find it a lot easier to find general news and conversations I am curious about using that method.
HN does this. My account has shafow-ignored flags. This is because I flagged too many things that said Israel did nothing wrong, or that YC had perfect ethics, and dang didn't like that.
Well see, now based on my heuristics I don't think youre here in great faith/a real person either
1) your account was made post LLM access being widespread
2) you made this claim
> I am extremely annoyed at hackernews right now
> wtf is happening. someone said nice try clanker bcause of my username like (wtf/)
and when I go back through your comment history trying to find when that occurred, I got to over 8 days ago and no one ever used the word "clanker" in response to you.
The signal to noise ratio is at an all time low because of LLMs. If you are a real person, I guess that sucks, but I have a difficult time believing anything you say now
The irony in this whole situation is so ironical. I was mad at first but this is actually just sad + irony
Someone accuses me of being clanker for no apparent reason
I respond to them first madly and secondly calmly
Their post got flagged so you are now unable to watch it plus my comment
But I had commented about it in other comment too when it wasn't flagged (If I remember correctly) and now the additional context got flagged because of Hackernews and you are unable to find it on the internet/hackernews
So 2) can still be chalked up to misunderstanding but I genuinely believe that this is sad that you didn't ask me about it and assumed I was AI
And secondly how do I EVEN PROVE THAT I AM NOT AI.
So I was mad that I got called AI once and so I got called AI twice now... Um, (what the fuck?)
My account was created a year ago because I am a teenager. I created Hackernews account when I was 16. AI came when I was 14-15. What'd you expect me to do?
Of course some of this information is not public so there might be misunderstanding but holy cow.
I got accused of being AI because I commented how other person accused me of being AI which got flagged and they did it for not much apparent in depth reason
And now thanks for accusing me again, Yes I am mad again hope you understand why (so if I say something rude, I don't mean it but you have been rude in this post as well)
> The signal to noise ratio is at an all time low because of LLMs. If you are a real person, I guess that sucks, but I have a difficult time believing anything you say now
Okay, have a nice day, what'd you expect me to say?
But I must say that this level of distrust in this community is once again extremely painful to witness and genuinely hurts (in this case me) or others
Please apologize man if possible, I can answer your further questions but I cant tolerate someone calling my comments, the one thing I am pretty proud of and learned a lot out of, AI of all things. It's deeply hurtful because my identity is never reflected back on in the way I want.
I am still sure how to respond to you as well. On One hand I want to say some pretty mad things because I am mad, on the other I don't want to because I don't want to stoop to that level of civil indecency.
I am quite frankly out of words. I made a bluesky post about it with their post and my original comment but I quickly removed it because I dont enjoy controversy of any kinds but oh I wish to vent about hackernews online right now, just Wow.
I've said what I've said and I am proud of somewhat all comments of mine on hackernews as they reflect growth. That is a personal thing and uhh its sucks to see that this is happened. Your post has made me reflect back if I want to be part of this community again, on one hand its full of amazing software discoveries and I try to help others here as well with any knowledge I might have and ask questions in genuine curiosity and this is what I get.
This is not okay man. I am just really sad right now to see the state of distrust. I don't even know what to say
I guess this first hand experience shows me how artists feel when their work gets called AI I suppose, trying to take something positive out of this I must admit, pretty negative experience for the past few days on hackernews
Well I take that back then, my basic grep missed that because it was flagged and collapsed.
You typed a lot and I’m not responding to all of it, but for this specific point
> And secondly how do I EVEN PROVE THAT I AM NOT AI.
You cannot do so anonymously anymore now that silicon can pass the Turing test convincingly. I can’t do it either. Trust was already at an all time low on the internet and now it’s completely cratered.
I personally have come around to believing that our technological progression has made widespread anonymous speech in public to be a net negative. Not as a symptom of the times but as a permanent change to human societies. I am still for free speech but I think we need to have human identity tied to the speech or we will end up in a world where you can have all the speech you want, and humans won’t see it. You’ll be making statements to machines who then try and manipulate you back, and can be deployed en masse at speeds humans can never match.
That or we make impersonating humans on the internet a crime with the death penalty and deal with the few people willing to risk that for whatever reason.
I really wish there was more transparency. We can’t see flagged posts without a direct link.
How about a flagged section?
What about a feature to challenge the flag?
What about a justification for the flag? Do flagged posts need to be approved by a mod?
I love HN. Flagged posts are the worst part. I can’t tell if the community is being taken over by a subset of bad actors, or YC is asserting opaque editorial control. Feels bad.
Bootlickers. The tech industry is crawling with them unfortunately - perfectly happy to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that they'll never be out of favor. The Hacker News team doesn't seem to care, this has been happening all year with important information.
Musk's astroturf bot army. It's the same with any submission that points out how far into a fascist dictatorship the US has already plunged. It's either concerted botting, or comfortable US tech sector workers putting their fingers in their ears and saying "la la la I can't hear you" because as yet, it's not them getting shot in the street.
