Ask HN: Are posts critical of Google getting flagged shortly after submission?

yen223 · 2024-09-23T14:39:36 1727102376

I've seen so many posts critical of Google here on HN that it would be surprising if there was any such suppression going on.

goles · 2024-09-23T15:04:12 1727103852

The one post got 79 comments in under an hour.

Probably tripped the overheated discussion detector.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

candiddevmike · 2024-09-23T15:33:59 1727105639

IMO that detector keeps too much actually good content off the front page. Your post needs to be engaging enough for folks to upvote but not too engaging for folks to comment otherwise it leaves the front page.

calibas · 2024-09-23T15:42:29 1727106149

Yep, anything too controversial or exciting get buried. It's like to polar opposite of the Facebook ranking algorithm.

Seems ripe for manipulation, you could go start arguments in whatever threads you want to see downranked.

r721 · 2024-09-24T14:43:25 1727189005

That's why I usually check out both default front page and "Most active current discussions" (https://news.ycombinator.com/active).

Freedom2 · 2024-09-24T00:44:17 1727138657

YCombinator naturally doesn't want divisive content on the front page as it hurts their brand.

dang · 2024-09-24T03:06:31 1727147191

It's not about "brand", it's about the mandate of the site. Intellectual curiosity and internet inflammation are at odds with each other.

nomilk · 2024-09-23T15:06:42 1727104002

> overheated discussion detector

First time hearing of this - it might explain (at least part of) what had been observed.

pvg · 2024-09-23T15:38:31 1727105911

Perhaps something for @Dang to investigate

You can email such suspicions to hn@ycombinator.com.

calibas · 2024-09-23T15:47:29 1727106449

FYI, this post was ranking fairly high on the front page, then it just vanished.

dang · 2024-09-23T19:01:42 1727118102

Users flagged it. Correctly of course.

nomilk · 2024-09-24T01:39:45 1727141985

Can you explain why it should be flagged? At least ostensibly, it seems earnest, introspective (at the site level), and of interest to the community.

(My best guess is perhaps HN doesn’t allow posts about HN. Or perhaps posts based on speculation.)

dang · 2024-09-24T03:10:07 1727147407

> perhaps HN doesn’t allow posts about HN

We don't disallow them, but meta is the crack of internet forums, so the bar for those to be on topic is high. The current post doesn't come close to clearing the bar.

Why? Because such perceptions are extremely common and nearly always bogus. You've fallen into the trap (<-- I don't mean to pick on you personally! it's extremely common, as I say) of arriving at an overgeneralization based on a small handful of datapoints that you happened to personally notice. The reality is that HN hosts tons of negative threads about Google. A couple minutes with HN Search is sufficient to establish this. There are also neutral threads about Google and positive threads about Google, of course—it's a big company—but the negative probably dominates.

Hypergeneralization-about-HN-based-on-tiny-set-of-datapoints-that-coalesce-into-perception-that-feels-convincing-but-in-fact-is--bogus-and-which-has-strong-inflammatory-qualities-that-fit-other-peoples-priors-perfectly-and-get-them-going is just about the most common phenomenon that exists on this site and is definitely not the basis for an on-topic submission!

calibas · 2024-09-23T19:33:01 1727119981

I believe there's a certain degree of "reputation management" happening with HN, and it seems unfair that we're not allowed to even talk about it.

That being said, I can understand why you don't want to see the comments degenerate into people accusing each other of being shills and bots.

dang · 2024-09-24T03:23:08 1727148188

I'd be happy to answer whatever you want to know about how we run HN but you'll have to explain to me what "reputation management" means. It sounds gross though.

calibas · 2024-09-24T05:30:32 1727155832

It's often talked about here on HN, sometimes goes by the name ORM:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation_management

You can easily hire people to manipulate websites.

specproc · 2024-09-23T16:01:23 1727107283

Easily testable hypothesis, at its simplest we could do:

  flagged ~ google_in_title + title_sentiment + upvotes + num_comments + some_time_var

libria · 2024-09-23T15:40:14 1727106014

> Perhaps something for @Dang to investigate.

Then email dang? Why bother asking us? We don't have any of this data.

codingdave · 2024-09-23T15:13:25 1727104405

One of those is flagged, the other two are not. (At least as of right now.) You cannot downvote posts, so that isn't a concern.

So sure, there may be some people flagging things... but if the post is not deserving of such treatment, other people typically vouch for it. And it is always possible that HN is doing something more behind the scenes, but odds are it is just the community doing their own self-moderation, with all the pros and cons that come with self-moderation.

candiddevmike · 2024-09-23T15:36:01 1727105761

AIUI vouching is harder to do/fewer people can do it vs flagging, which IMO enables some at times questionable censorship.

There should be a 1:1 vouch/flag capability or do away with it entirely and just use score like slashdot.

noirscape · 2024-09-23T15:39:22 1727105962

One of the remaining two posts also likely triggered the heated discussion detected, since the one known criteria is if a post has more comments than upvotes, it gets algorithmically pushed down.

bschmidt1 · 2024-09-23T15:31:04 1727105464

Of course HN flags posts that go against their agenda but will never admit it. They also selectively ban, while allowing certain users to go crazy on commenters.

Again HN will never admit this - it's way easier to gaslight you by using fake user accounts with high reputations, and just downvote/flag/dead comments like this one.

"vote ups good... vote downs bad..." No reading comprehension needed folks.

OutOfHere · 2024-09-23T16:11:56 1727107916

Critical posts are often downvoted andor flagged to extinction. It's not unique to Google. If your post is not on board with the "SV moneymaking at all costs" mantra, ethics be danged, you'll likely find it disappear.