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Comment by afavour | Hacker News Reader

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Deepfakes and their implications are interesting, they’re technical, they’re of interest to hackers. A tech company operating globally and violating the laws in multiple jurisdictions at once? An interesting topic worth of discussion.

Your attempt at gatekeeping here would be more believable if we weren’t all able to look at other submissions on the front page. A government site called “eat real food” has been on the front page for nearly a day now. It’s very convenient to selectively apply guidelines but it’s also transparently dishonest.

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Why didn't you also include the off-topic portion of the guidelines and make a case why this post doesn't classify as off-topic?

In what way am I gatekeeping? You were asking for an explanation, and I was attempting to show you one. I sat back and wondered (without any emotional stake in this) "hmm, what is afavour implying here and why would this be flagged?" And then re-read the guidelines myself, and it was pretty clear how an interpretation of this post would classify as off-topic.

I also don't understand your point about the front page or the "eat real food" post. What are you implying exactly?

What this situation looks like to me:

- you are outraged

- you are making assumptions about political bias in the moderators choices to flag this post

- you assume that I am siding with the moderators, rather than just pointing out how the moderators choices to flag this topic seems to align with the official guidelines.

- you assume I fall into some political or ideological bucket, but I almost certainly don't.

- the HN guidelines are there to foster intellectual curiosity, and part of that is acknowledging that topics that trigger outrage derail intellectual curiosity and are therefore off-topic. This post being flagged seems to be reasonably in line with this.

- I misinterpreted your original comment as genuine curiosity. I conflated your "I'm curious how long this will take to be flagged" with the "ask yourself why", and assumed you would be open to an explanation for the "why". Clearly you were not. You've made up your mind already about the matter. You aren't curious about this at all, so maybe then we shouldn't be having a discussion about it on HN?

>you assume I fall into some political bucket, when I almost certainly don't (I am not American and I don't follow American media). I don't use any social media other than HN and a couple private group chats.

This is pretty meaningless; one can share an ideology with an official they did not or even cannot vote for, and can do so even if they don't have Twitter.

Are you implying that because I am pointing out how the HN guidelines state crime and other topics that trample curiosity are off-topic, I share some ideology with some American official that condones child porn?

Whatever the guidelines state, those other topics are frequently discussed without much rancor which you refuse to confront. But anyway, all I was saying is that that specific line item is a non-sequitur.

> without much rancor which you refuse to confront

I was responding to the "why is this post flagged?", and you changed scope to "justify all moderator decisions across the platform". Consider that you may have a sensitivity to certain topics that I do not. It seems like you see something I don't.

I'm not condoning all moderator decisions. I'm not remotely familiar with all posts on HN. I'm only considering this one post and acknowledging how this topic is clearly trampling curiosity and that it seems reasonable to me that it's been flagged given the spirit and word of the HN guidelines.

Of the posts I am familiar with, there have been several cases when a thread was flagged that at first seemed on-topic but after reflecting I realized the comments had gone off the rails and that's why it was flagged. This decision seems very much in line with other cases I've seen, but I can't justify all decisions nor am I position to even judge them.

> But anyway, all I was saying is that that specific line item is a non-sequitur.

It actually wasn't, though I could have been more clear about why it was relevant. Where people get information and what tribe they feel they belong to changes how they interpret new information. The reason I brought it up is because I was getting the sense from multiple replies to my comments that some people were assuming I (and the moderators) wanted to censor the underlying concern about Grok as if I was a part of the American culture/political war. I was just trying to clarify I am not a part of that and want nothing to do with it.

>I was responding to the "why is this post flagged?", and you changed scope to "justify all moderator decisions across the platform".

The actual question in the top-level comment you replied to is "why is this post, and other posts that discuss potential malfeasance from X/Grok regularly flagged?" It is implicit from follow-ups that appealing to the guidelines does not wash except as a thought-terminating cliche. In that sense I guess you are right, the topic can derail intellectual curiosity.

> I was getting the sense from multiple replies to my comments that some people were assuming I (and the moderators) wanted to censor the underlying concern about Grok as if I was a part of the American culture/political war.

The current iteration of techno-optimism characteristic of a lot of this site's userbase may have originated in SV, but it isn't the exclusive province of Californians. That's most likely what is being referred to.

This is sealioning.

No it's not...

The GP's accusations of gatekeeping and dishonesty led me to deduce he was making assumptions about political leaning rather than a more respectful interpretation being to protect intellectually curious dialog.

Then parent made a comment about how political categorization doesn't matter when I can share an ideology with a political official out side of my jurisdiction.

So I think I reasonably asked a clarifying question about whether I was being assumed an ideology for my stance of the interpretation of HN guidelines. I asked this because I couldn't see any other reason why parent would have brought up ideology or made that comment.

This is certainly not sealioning. I am not trolling, I am not harassing, I am not demanding evidence or attempting to disrupt dialog. I was only trying to clarify parents point and reason for introducing ideology into the dialog.

I interpret the conversation totally differently. This person was extremely clear with you.

This post is bullseye dead center in bounds for a HN post. The idea that it does not foster curiosity comes from a very particular place.

> This person

It's two different people.

If I zoom out and look at the whole thread, I can take a more generous view of your criticism and acknowledge that I could have been more direct rather than leading through questions. I still don't think that's sealioning, but I wasn't as clear and patient as I could have been or want to show up here. I am doing my best and trying to get better.

The issue I think is that the HN guidelines have two different sets of criteria for on-topic and off-topic. With a bit more time to reflect, it seems like the people who think this submission is on-topic are only looking at the on-topic criteria set and not really considering the off-topic criteria set.

They also aren't considering the spirit of the guidelines to foster intellectually curious dialog and avoid topics that derail it.

The comment two up from the one you replied to was not my best and does warrant some criticism, and I think that's the one that probably triggered you to make the sealioning accusation, even though I disagree with that particular classification.

> The idea that it does not foster curiosity comes from a very particular place

Spell it out for me please. What exactly are you accusing me of? This entire thread has been hostile to me but keeps beating around the bush. Are you saying that HN mods and I are protecting Grok in a biased way?

> This post is bullseye dead center in bounds for a HN post.

It definitely isn't, as it hits multiple criteria for off-topic as stated clearly in the HN guidelines.

> They also aren't considering the spirit of the guidelines to foster intellectually curious dialog and avoid topics that derail it.

Yes they are. We considered it and came to a different conclusion than you. We believe that this topic does foster intellectually curious dialog and your insistence that we don't is frustrating.

> Not if the topic consistently devolves away from intellectually curious dialog. There are clearly a lot of charged emotions and strong opinions across most of these comments.

IMO, this is the core problem. Charged emotions and strong opinions are not the opposite of intellectually curious dialog. An insistence that conversation play out like an abstract game separated from all feeling is anathema to useful communication, in my opinion. People are not better, smarter, or more interesting by being dispassionate. Especially when the topic is wide scale mass abuse and harassment. Feelings are not bad.

Okay, well my goal here was to communicate a benefit of the doubt most respectful interpretation of the moderators decision, and how it can be justified by the official HN guidelines.

While I could have been a lot more clear from the start, I think I've done my part. You can disagree with me and assume bad faith if you want. That's your choice.

The flags don't come from moderators. They come from users.

Thank you for pointing this out to me. I didn't understand how that worked and it very much changed my perspective on this whole thread.

It's revealing that you're repeatedly framing your decision as someone else's. Did you not see the flag button that you yourself pressed? And I'm assuming you did press it, because you so vehemently argue in favor of flagging this submission.

> It's revealing that you're repeatedly framing your decision as someone else's

Yes it's revealing that I was confused about how HN works.

I did flag it, and I don't deny that. I explained in another comment how I thought it was 70/30 off/on topic. However my confusion stems from the fact that I thought moderators made the final decision to flag a submission. I just read about it and now realize that users drive flagging which alerts moderators and then they choose whether to set it as dead. At least now that's how I think it works.

So yes, a lot of my comments didn't make any sense. All of my interpretation of the guidelines I stand by, but my misunderstanding about the flagging mechanism totally skewed a bunch of my comments and I no longer agree with them. If I could, I would edit them.

[flagged] [dead] is also not set by mods. It is automatic. It is only when you see [dead] without [flagged] that the mods have done it.

I feel pretty silly about all of this. Part of the reason I was so adamant about my stance is that I've had comments flagged in the past, which at the time I felt wasn't appropriate (I really thought fell within the guidelines) and I mistakenly thought the moderators had done. So over time I adapted my interpretation of the guidelines, which is what I was representing here.

Now I realize I was being censored by who knows who based on their interpretation of the guidelines, or who knows why, not the people who run this site. Worse, I let it bias how I use the site and now propogated that pattern out on to others.

I really don't know what to think about all this as there is a lot to unpack and reflect on, but I've unflagged this submission.

Thanks again for clarifying how flagging works for me it's made a big difference.

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