When it isn't, will you acknowledge you were wrong and change your predictions?
Maybe this is a sign that consensus is shifting. It seems now that it's more politically risky to deny Israel's committing warcrimes than it is to acknowledge it.
While I agree with much of what this blogpost says, I am surprised it's still up, especially since there doesn't seem to be much implication for the tech community, or discussion about what it means. (It is significant that one of the countries most central to the worldwide tech community is committing genocide and is increasingly seen as a pariah state, but even then, that is not what's being discussed here.)
EDIT: I spoke to soon, this was [flagged] just as I posted my comment.
Thousands of comments are posted each day and there are two moderators. Have you emailed us about the bad comments you see?
I see that the posts I was calling out for this the past couple of days have been taken down now. I assume you did that. Thank you for that.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40586013
Here is another one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40503387
That is to say, if my posts were correctly taken down for e.g. being rude, then I would expect posts which engage in seriously harmful rhetoric to be taken down much quicker.
Note that when I say moderation I am talking about moderation in a broad sense, not just what the admins do, but also when user flags take posts down. As a community HN should be very quick on taking down posts which engage in genocide denialism.
Before I start first let me clear that when I say genocide denial I am talking about the specific form of hate speech which is to deny the atrocities them selves, deny their severity, or deny the intentions behind them. I left a post about this which got flagged (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44718052).
Users which find issue with me calling the Gaza genocide a genocide, and flag it because of that, are not engaging in the type of genocide denial I am talking about. Although I find it extremely lame if the HN community takes greater issue with my semantics than the horrible crimes being done, and the posts on HN which are helping the propaganda war around them. I think HN may be on the wrong side of humanity if this is the case.
Users that actually disagree with me about the atrocities being conducted in Gaza should not be given the opportunity to direct the discussion in any way. Just so we are clear we are talking about the crime of crimes here, and genocide denial is an integral part of that crime, without it the criminals would quickly be brought to justice, which is why genocide denial—and genocidal propaganda in general—is illegal in many countries.
What I am saying here is that, yes, if you disagree with me on the nature of the atrocities the Israeli Army is currently engaging in in Gaza, you are literally breaking laws in many countries. And such hate should be moderated out of existence rather quickly on any tech forum, just like any other forms of hate speech.
At any rate: my participation in this thread has stopped being useful, and so here's where I'll bow out. Thanks for listening!
I will conclude by saying at some point (and that point may even be reached) genocide denial will not be tolerated on HN, it is not a matter of more HN agreeing that Israel is conducting a genocide (thought that is a probable precursor) but rather that HN users will start treating genocide denial as the form of hate speech that it is.
My conduct up to this point will be deemed insignificant—and almost entirely forgotten about—by then, no matter how heated I become. But many HN users—including me—will remember how difficult it was to get to that point, and how much hate was allowed on HN during an ongoing genocide. I hope some HN users will see their own guilt in participating in a culture which treated genocide denial as a simple disagreement.
The flags often have the effect of pushing things off the front page, even when they're restored within an hour or so. Not always though: this story [0] from today is currently front page after having been flagged as well.
Even temporary flagging also has the effect of diluting the conversation; so that instead of talking about war crimes, their perpetrators, or how to stop them, we're talking about flagging and algorithms.