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Comment by myrmidon | Hacker News Reader

So your position is that opinions (from all parts of the political spectrum, depending on topic) get routinely supressed via the flagging system, making HN a "non-functional social space"?

I disagree with that strongly as well. Looking at the main thread on this post, every single flagged comment looks perfectly justified to me, as an example.

If such suppression is common, it should be easy to point out comments that are unjustifiably flagged?

I also disagree that the system is "incredibly punishing"-- at worst, some other people won't be able to see your comment or post, you don't even get banned or anything.

I'm quite happy with how moderation is being done on this forum compared to basically anywhere else.

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HN functions to announce libraries, programming languages, projects, stuff like that. It functions as a thing to find out what's happening in programming and in the tech industry; that's why I continue to check it as I have done for 15 years running now. So it's not useless space; I still get a lot out of visiting HN, but that's in the form of announcements, not in the form of socialization. As a place of discussion I would agree with LexiMax that HN isn't a functioning social space.

Thank you for picking up on that nuance. I actually think that gamified voting systems are pretty decent at content aggregation. I regularly poach stories from HN for discussion in other, less dysfunctional communities.

HN still has a problem with mob censorship of stories, but because there are generally far fewer story submissions than comments, plus the fact that https://news.ycombinator.com/active exists which surfaces flagged stories for users who aren't logged in, this mob censorship tends to be much less effective. It forces the censors to put in the extra leg-work of going into the comments section instead.

> So your position is that opinions (from all parts of the political spectrum, depending on topic) get routinely supressed via the flagging system, making HN a "non-functional social space"?

Pretty much. Hacker News is half sockpuppets/throwaways, and half internet handles who smile in your face while holding a knife behind their back, ready to stab you in the darkness.

That's not an environment suitable for conducive connections with other human beings, though it's a mighty fine way to drive engagement by turning any slightly controversial thread into a voting/flagging war zone.

You want my advice, find communities with real people in them, places where people are more than an internet handle. Find communities with accountable moderation. Get to know people, learn about their life outside of whatever the topic of the day is. Heck, even meet them IRL. Touch grass.

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