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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

As someone who sees both sides of this, and as someone who didn't understand this for some time, it's important to understand that one reason a story is likely to get flagged is because users think it's highly unlikely to lead to productive discussion. It doesn't mean it's a bad story, or even unworthy of discussion, but many types of stories seem to, pretty predictably, lead to a cesspool of comments where it's clear most folks have no desire to listen to opposing points of view.

FWIW, I found this to be a really interesting story that I didn't previously know about, so I hope it stays up, and this is a story I'd be willing to vouch for.

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>it's highly unlikely to lead to productive discussion.

I guess all you have to do, if you want to suppress information about something, is to ensure that its comments always devolve into unproductive discussions. Funny, I once read about this as a tactic for controlling information flow in online communities...

If only we had a word for this behaviour, for example some nordic folklore creature ?

flagging is voting to censor a particular view. it could have legit uses like spam or toxic comments but just as easy to censor narratives that isn't aligned or clashes with the voter's

im not sure what other tools exist other than a block button like X

There is a system in place for flagging specific comments by users.

Admins can, and do, prune entire branches of comments off of posts.

These two methods would take a bit more work than just banishing the topic entirely, but with topics like the first time that "AI" kill lists are publicized, maybe exceptions should be made.

> users think it's highly unlikely to lead to productive discussion

I wish people would let people decide for themselves what is productive or not...

There's always Twitter/X or Reddit if that's your jam. I just think it's hard to disagree that a huge, if not primary, value people feel they get from HN is the discussion, which is probably unmatched compared to any open forum on the net, and a huge part of that is moderation and curation.

Like I said, I don't agree with this particular topic getting flagged (I saw it go back and forth numerous times), but I also would push back hard on any allegations of "censorship". There are plenty of completely open forums online anyone can access with a click, and HN is most decidedly not that, by design, since the beginning of the site.

Almost all pro Israel posts are flagged so I think it is fair to completely remove the topic in HN. There are only 16m of jews in a world of 8b.

Successful flagging doesn't (just) disable comments, it disables discovery/access.

For a high quality piece of tech-related investigative journalism like this, flagging is simply censorship.

If one don't want to engage, the hide button isn't too far from the flag button. It's important that people have the option to speak freely and openly about this topic, since so many places shut down any conversation that shows sympathy for Palestinians and/or doesn't paint Israel as unequivocally morally good. This is one of the reasons Israel has been able to get away with this behavior for so long.

Considering what regularly doesn't get flagged on this site related to AI, conflict, etc., this topic seems to fit in.

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