An article titled "[name] is a traitor" is not a good article for HN, no matter who it's about, as it's flamebait.

Flagging bots and users who flag inappropriately don't have much effect here. We review flagged posts, and for any account that is flagging inappropriately, their flags get switched off.

Almost every day the accusation is made that anything critical of the U.S. administration or tech celebrities is censored here. And the response is always the same. This stuff gets flagged, correctly, by users who want HN to stay true to its intended purpose, which is to discuss topics that engage intellectual curiosity.

The day-to-day posts criticizing the U.S. administration or tech celebrities normally don't fit this category, because they generally say the same thing as the version was posted the day before, and the comments in the discussions also say largely the same things.

Still, we frequently turn off flags on politics-related posts, or indeed posts about tech celebrities, when they contain "significant new information" and can sustain a discussion thread that contains new ideas in the comments.

The users who keep complaining that these stories are censored are users who seem to want HN to be something other than what it has always been intended to be.

Is there any sense that your view of what HN "has always intended to be" needs to be updated in the face of changing relationships between tech and politics? Any reflection on the role this moderation policy has had on the broader world outside of tech?

I regularly see positively rated HN comments that are indistinguishable from stormfront posts 20 years ago. The main stream of tech leadership is directly involved in eliminationist & unconstitutional policies in the US and elsewhere, and uses their authority and influence within the tech industry to promote these racist political platforms.

Any reflection on how HN's moderation policy has allowed them to do so, the impact it has had in providing such fertile ground for them to work in? It seems that what HN was "always intended to be" has turned out to be an effective propaganda tool for one of the most destructive political movements in living memory. I wouldn't feel good about staying the course here.

> I regularly see positively rated HN comments that are indistinguishable from stormfront posts 20 years ago.

This is the kind of comment that is only ever made without links that would enable the claim to be evaluated by others.

And the rest of the comment that seems to assert that the political craziness in the world is the fault of HN is pretty wild, but is perhaps an assumption that explains why some people think this is an important place to conduct ideological battle.

We’re a tiny site in the scheme of things. None of the tech leaders who are influential in politics have been active or popular on HN for years, if ever. The HN audience has always been distrustful of big tech and the relationship between corporations and politics. The core HN audience is people who work in tech (mostly employees or freelancers) who are interested learning new things and like to work on interesting projects.

We know we are not - and cannot be - a bubble that’s isolated from the rest of the world. But it’s a mistake to think that HN has any significant influence on politics or the tech leaders who are active in politics.

These aren't stories, they're random comments on random threads over the past two years. Some of them, had you flagged them and mailed hn@yc about them, likely would have gotten moderated (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41658850, for example). But moderators don't see all the comments, so if you want something done about them, you have to help make that happen.

Most of them, though, are simply comments you and I disagree with. It's an open-access site, people are going to write things you disagree with, and there isn't going to be a moderation rule saying, for instance, that only anti-carceral comments are allowed on the site.

I spend a weird amount of time watching for specific patterns of nasty shit on HN (use the search bar to see if I've missed a race/IQ in the last year) and my experience has been the moderators are as repulsed by toxicity as I am, and they're quick to act.

You're not the first of us to express concerns that the specific moderation principles HN uses are too accommodating to toxic edgelordism (another long-timer once noted that they appear to function as a kind of grooming academy for hateful rhetoric, allowing in almost any sentiment expressed coolly and without vitriol). But improvements aren't as easy as they look. A good exercise: if you think comment moderation is failing because the rules aren't right, propose the next guideline that would fix it.

I've been doing that for years, and some of my guideline proposals have made it in (can't see everyone else's comment scores: you're welcome). Most of the ones that haven't, though, I've come to see would have been unworkable.

Thing is, that kind of vitriol is the whole point of hateful rhetoric, by and large. It's what occasionally makes "hate" appealing to some people in the first place - see your local hate-filled social media network for evidence of that. Posting "hateful rhetoric ... coolly and without vitriol", intentionally or not, is an excellent way of unpacking it for everyone else and showing just how pointless it really is.

Sure; the system we have in place is rather good at handling overtly vitriolic comments (my experience is generally that user flags kill them before emails to the moderators land). I'm just leaving open space for critiques of HN moderation; those are a fine thing, but they're really only meaningful if you can write the moderation guidelines that fill the gaps you're worried about.

> The main stream of tech leadership is directly involved in eliminationist & unconstitutional policies in the US and elsewhere

This 100%. I would add these tech oligarchs and their captured employees are the users here.

>It seems that what HN was "always intended to be" has turned out to be an effective propaganda tool for one of the most destructive political movements in living memory. I wouldn't feel good about staying the course here.

Perfectly said, if this is what HN wants to be (another propaganda arm of the regime and oligarch mouthpiece) I'm not sure there's a future here.

HN has no interest in being a mouthpiece for the rich and powerful any more that we want to be a venting space for people who push the same ideological rhetoric no matter the topic.

What we are here for is to find and share interesting new ideas, including/especially ones that can help address the biggest problems in the world (rare as they may be).

> This stuff gets flagged, correctly, by users who want HN to stay true to its intended purpose, which is to discuss topics that engage intellectual curiosity.

I respectfully disagree with your claim that these posts are flagged "correctly". Many of these posts, while related to politics or current news cover highly technical and intellectually intriguing topics. I think it's pretty disingenuous to say these users are acting genuinely in the best interest of the community.

To make matters worse, reputable media outlets like 404 Media who publish highly relevant but critical articles are autoflagged. The reason given "because they have paywall" which is 100% BS.

You’re always welcome to email us to point out an article that has that potential to sustain a high quality discussion. These things are often best judged by their consequences. If the thread if full of repetitive ideological rhetoric, it’s not good for HN. If it has plenty of interesting new ideas, then it belongs here and we’ll happily give it the exposure the community wants. Either way, we’re answerable to the community.