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Comment by theossuary | Hacker News Reader

HN is disproportionately bigoted. I'm a trans person and using this site can be really fraught at times. They aren't painting all of HN with a brush; but it's fair to say that I wouldn't want HN discussing my projects either, because it'll tend towards right-wing hatred more often than not. That's just a large portion of the demographic of this website. I'm glad the Asahi team is taking a stance against bigotry instead of brushing it under the rug like so many "allies" do.

You can get butt hurt when someone says a group you're a part of has issues; or you can self-reflect and understand where the criticism is coming from. That's up to you.

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Also a trans person and I felt obligated to log in for the first time in over a year seeing your comment.

I've seen comments here that are a nicely packaged up version of 4chan (non lgbt boards), and I strongly suggest you leave here because I think the issue is inherently a lack of moderation and I don't anticipate that changing. I'll be banned for this comment most likely, probably because its "inflammatory" but blatant transphobia apparently isn't, but this is the first HN link I've seen since I quit this site a long time ago and I'm just perpetually disappointed by this website. Cutting out transphobic joints like this was one of the best things I've done for myself.

And @ anyone else who is reading this - there's nothing more injustice loves than inaction. Take it from a trans person who quit because of the bigotry they saw - please believe me, it's a lack of moderation. Speak up for what's right. If you think you have nothing to do with it - by continuing to let it happen, you are silently condoning its existence.

I completely agree. The transphobia on this site is plentiful and abhorrent. The moderators are less than worthless when it comes to it (heavily implying they are part of the issue) and the moderators HATE when you point out failures in their moderation.

It should be expected given the rest of HN, but I'm putting it plainly for others as well, the site has a massive bigotry problem with its users, and a moderation issue with its moderators

I would love for you to point out comments that that are bigoted against trans people. HN has always been a trans-friendly website and major members of HN over the years have been either trans or openly pro-trans.

I've never seen it, which implies dang actually does his job.

I've seen it a number of times and tried to argue against it when possible. Many comment chains and posts about trans people have a couple of comments deriding them as mentally ill or denying their identity. They do go dead often, but that also doesn't happen immediately.

It's never going to happen immediately... comments are hidden after x amount of flags, and only made actually dead after human review (ie, dang looks at the mod queue). Anything else would be a fast path to (ab)using flagging to silence individuals.

I have showdead on, so I do see dead comments saying absolutely dumb shit from time to time. What I was asking for above was proof that, at this moment, there are comments that are as described and are not either dead or downvoted into oblivion.

There will always be dumb people saying dumb shit, no website on earth that has user created content will ever be free of that. As long as dumb people exist on the Internet, dumb things that were uttered by dumb people will continue be handled by mods.

It happens pretty consistently if you mention you're trans for any reason (even if it is fully on-topic) or you are visibly trans as the writer of the post itself, you will either get voted down or an entire tangent on how trans people are mentally ill, unreliable, how you shouldn't use any projects with trans people in leadership roles will form as as a subthread... Any number of unprompted off-topic discussion involving your mental state or how trans people in general are all delusional or going into transphobic talking points (which, if you push back on them, you'll be accused of being intellectually bankrupt or something - in a thread not even about trans people).

It's not "most of HN" in my experience, but more people could be calling these subthreads out, getting posts out of downvote hell and of course dang and friends could just cut that shit out, period.

Except... I've never seen that happen. There is no downvote brigade on HN that targets trans people. Being part of a downvote brigade is against the rules, and dang will ban you for doing it.

You are asking dang to do something that is already occurring. I have never seen any thread in showdead or not that specifically targets people for being trans.

I am going to re-iterate my request: show me the evidence.

I'm not going to argue with someone who has been on HN for so long "but never seen it", because that likely means you're one of those people who will argue indefinitely that "questioning biological gender" isn't transphobia, and that transphobic discussions just... aren't!

it's there, I urge you to be aware of it in the future and not harass people who are making others aware of it. and absolutely don't tell people that they're wrong for the transphobia they have often EXPERIENCED. (And no, you don't get to ask trans people to bring out the receipts of their trauma, wtf?)

Nobody is asking for trans people to "bring out receipts" of their trauma.

I'm asking for proof that dang has not done his job and that there are transphobic comment threads that have not been properly moderated out of existence.

Accusing people on HN of being transphobic for asking proof of transphobic behavior so that the moderators can moderate it is called "being a troll".

I'll reiterate my claim: It does mostly get moderated, but not entirely and often way too late when the post is falling off the front page anyway.

The comments do not happen on other platforms in the first place. HN just has a segment of people that will cause this. I don't want to explore if dang can personally change this or if this site needs a culture shift to address these (probably few) people, but they're there.

Here's a bunch of receipts: https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/110507731403617388

Here's the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36230649

And here's the other thread that marcan refers to that was [flagged][dead] for about the first 3 hours and only recovered because of attention elsewhere. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36030969

The last one also has some great comments (/s) ranging from grating to outright genocidal, especially if you switch on showdead.

I've seen some pretty bad sexism on articles about women in tech, but I don't recall that on any posts about Asahi. Transphobic commenters also (subjectively) seem like a small minority.

It doesn't matter if they're a minority if moderation just lets them use HN as a megaphone and post hundreds of comments before any sort of reaction.

Or in terms of a tired metaphor: If you refuse to weed out your bad apples, you can't really complain when people stop taking your fruit shipments because they keep spoiling their bunches :)

I am sorry you have had this experience. How can HN be better?

Better moderation/moderators who actually take transphobia seriously

I'm sorry this has been your experience. Thank you for sharing it, and know that it has prompted self-reflection for me.

I hope future online encounters are positive, wherever you are. :)

When you say disproportionate, what are you comparing against?

It's not brushing it under the rug if I don't see it. As in, any time I have seen a bigoted comment it is downvoted or flagged.

The pushback is because what you're describing literally isn't observed, and no one is showing links or calling out accounts.

Maybe you're right, but it isn't my experience so nothing is "up to me" except continuing to flag or argue against biased comments.

Look through my comment history, there's literally extreme transphobia 5 comments back. Go through my comments, there's on average transphobia on every page that I try to address, because it's never addressed by dang, et al. It's been present ever since I started using this site. As compared to literally every other technical community I'm apart of, HN devolves into transphobia much more often. Just because you don't see something, doesn't mean it isn't there.

>Just because you don't see something, doesn't mean it isn't there.

I'm glad we agree.

As for extreme transphobia: the one thread most immediately does have an ignorant person making stupid claims about a boy liking dolls leading to transition. But is that extreme on the spectrum? And is it not downvoted, indicating that more people disagreeed than agreed with them?

It seems, at least, that said ignoramus actually believes what they are saying, rather than trolling. In which case I think it's good to leave their comment up to let people tear it down.

Removing non-troll comments solely because we dont like them will only drive the user further into bitterness and self assuredness by not being challenged, while onlookers like me are less likely to know they exist or how wrong they are.

FWIW, thanks for the explanation of related virtualization tooling.

This comment series (it's not just one comment, and your downplaying of it and not including eg that they called adults in trans children's lives "pedophiles" borders on the verge of dishonesty) is absolutely extreme on the spectrum of transphobia: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36804092

The author should have been banned for this, not just downvoted.

I disagree, leaving up stuff like that just encourages more of it, and it shows how little HN cares about making a space that trans people can be comfortable contributing to. In fact, originally my comment was downvoted quite a bit too.

Starting about 3 pages in, there's on average some transphobia on every page of comments (find for 'trans', it turns out I've only ever said that on this site in response to transphobia hah). Not as extreme, but it becomes exhausting having to constantly defend my rights with very little help from the community at large, or dang. I've had to take a hiatus more than once because I realized I was getting bitter about the tech community, when it's really just HN.

I really do want to provide helpful and interesting comments where I can, and be apart of this community. I love parts of it so much. But as it is today, I completely understand Asahi's opinion of HN. I have to constantly choose my words very carefully for fear of angering the right-wing contingent on this site, with often no support (the most recent comment is an outlier).

> They aren't painting all of HN with a brush

> In addition, we find that only a tiny fraction of HN comments (often less than 1%) actually engage with the substance of our articles, with the majority being off-topic, misinformative, repetitive, or otherwise of low quality, making the overall value of HN exposure overwhelmingly negative for our project.

You sure? I feel like painting 99% of a group of people with a brush is equivalent to painting the group as a whole.

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