I’m observing that critical submissions about this news subject are being flagged, even when there is no editorializing of the headline.
Note: This does not preclude the existence of another group of people, who are misusing flagging because they dislike the conclusion or viewpoint of the story.
That said, moderation is hard, and if posts like "Twitter moves headquarters" are OK because it's related to the software/IT, then we ought to also be able to talk about IT security policy getting screwed up in other large organizations, including the US government.
> anything good hackers would find interesting
> anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosities
IMO this story qualifies on both counts
Going through new items, I noticed someone [flagged] this submission, but I read it, vouched for it, and even left a detailed explanation... But now I see it's gone to [flagged][dead] anyway, presumably because it happened to have certain words in the title.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42937533
Edit: So, I noticed it's resurrected again, so... thanks? That wasn't my intent linking it here, I just think it's a good "tracer bullet" for discussing moderation, an example that attracts false-positives.
I do understand the reason - it's mostly inflammatory discussions and HN want be tech focused. Makes sense.
The downside of it, is that for example if you search for "Tesla" in HN Search, the following top 7 articles are:
- Tesla Cybertruck
- All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware
- Elon Musk Deletes Own, SpaceX and Tesla Facebook Pages After #deletefacebook
- Tesla Roadster
- Tesla Energy
- Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System
- Tesla Semi
Do they give and accurate view of Tesla ? Hundreds of articles about how Tesla Roadster, Semi, Full Self-Driving are nowhere to be seen 5-10 YEARS after the supposed released are silenced and flagged.
So again, I understand why, but I would argue that it actually enables this fraud.
It's almost like that's an excuse and not a reason.
* H1B visa legislation
* How internet traffic metadata is collected by governments
* Biological science if it somehow refers to evolution, unusual chromosome mixes, or embryonic development.
* GNU/GPL/free-software efforts
* Encryption
And Much Much More!™
Most things are at least a little bit political--or can be made political by someone who makes it their politics--that it amounts to to a heckler's veto.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.