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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

I am actually surprised by what appears to be HN's explicit censorship of this topic.

Just two days ago this NYT editorial [1] was on the front page of HN with 20+ upvotes IIRC, and before there were more than 1 or 2 comments the post was deleted and unviewable. (And didn't show up as flagged either -- just totally deleted.)

I'm not sure how many people on HN are aware of what appears to be admin censorship of this topic. And it's not like it's some incendiary blog post -- it's an Op-Ed from the nation's traditional "newspaper of record", part of the national conversation, and relevant to our industry.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/opinion/harvard-asian-ame...

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I believe you're mistaken. Do you know that item ids are just incrementing integers? We're making it bloody hard on ourselves to get away with censorship that way.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17403488

Other recent threads on the subject:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16759138

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16250371

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17327774

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17320360

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17334733

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17325778

The post is there, just flagged. Had plenty of (mostly terrible) discussion.

I don't believe that it is hacker news admins that are doing the censorship. There is a flag feature and any post that is flagged is automatically hidden. There is a dedicated contingent of users that will flag anything that goes against their narrative.

This happens for articles that discuss China, diversity, etc.

It would be prudent to let "controversial" subjects stand before the court of public opinion rather than be automatically censored, regardless of how riled up the comments section can get.

Hm, what if it was "anything goes" but buttons to hid things you personally find offensive? If you analysed enough hide-clicks you could perhaps start to softly predict what to hide automatically for that person. By softly I mean blurring it, and not hiding it outright. I actually kind of like the Fb filter allowing quite disturbing material, but blurring it and in effect telling you that, "Hey, you might not want to see this, but it's here if you change your mind." Oftentimes I just scroll past those, because - wow - I really don't need stuff like that in my life, and I'm grown up enough to make that decision for myself. On so select occasions I still look at them, for reasons. But then I at least had a reason! So it's beyond complaining, and I can really only thank myself for looking at it, if I didn't like it after all.

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