I've noticed this a ton lately. So, so many posts completely brigaded. Regardless of if the flag is removed, it can easily stop discussion and visibility of the thread. I emailed Dang about it when I first noticed it happening, and the response...
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Sorry for the delay in getting back to you—it's been a crazy last few days!
Users flagged that one. We can only guess why users flag things, but there have been so many posts about the current political goings-on that I think there's a lot of fatigue about it. In this case the article was more of an opinion piece than a factual report, so it's probably not one that we'd override the flags on.
Daniel (dang)
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So the system is setup to allow this abuse. It's weaponizing the flag system. I'm sure this type of flagging is already automated by how fast some posts disappear on /new.
What's to stop someone from buying enough old accounts and mass flagging other topics to chill discussion / dissent? This could easily be done for a few grand. Rotate accounts doing the flagging and make sure they engage in some "high quality" discussion from time to time to avoid detection. Make sure the same groups of accounts aren't flagging the same posts, etc.
E.g. "I never want to see a freaking post about Rust again"...
Note: I had to wait hours to post this comment because my account was rate limited. I'm assuming because I'm involved in this discussion at all: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35157524
Now by the time I can actually post, this thread is well off the front page. This site is really good at effectively silencing people.
Dang, I'd like to know the specific comments where I am going over the line, or are too "low-quality". I have been called out once or twice over the last decade by you, and have agreed that I could have conducted myself better in those instances and tried not to fall back into those patterns.
there's no need to buy old accounts (lol?), there are hundreds of millions of people worldwide who have extremely strong anti-immigration beliefs, who continue to cheer on the Republican-backed express cruelty for whatever reasons, and some of these people are active on HN
There is if you want to do this systematically rather than adhoc.
> there are hundreds of millions of people worldwide who have extremely strong anti-immigration beliefs
Totally understood, and know they are here and will flag things they disagree with while still being a real human.
I wasn't saying that is specifically what's happening with this post. I assume that's more what's happening when posts in /newest are flagged within a few min.
That part was just saying "this really wouldn't be hard to do if anyone put in just a little bit of effort, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was happening".
I’ve emailed Dan and received the same response. My suspicions completely mirror yours.
I find this line particularly weak:
> We can only guess why users flag things
It’s not that hard to do some clustering analysis to see if bad-faith actors are repeatedly flagging posts in a coordinated manner. Maybe he’s trying to avoid giving away anti-spam secret sauce, but that doesn’t seem likely given the language of the copypasta. Speaking for myself, I would like any sort of assurance that anything other than a 100% laissez-faire approach to flag abuse is happening.
Sure, you can take anything to the extreme and then they'll have to mop that up.
Until that's reality, the system mostly works. Let us know if you ever figure out the perfect flagging system where someone can't "buy old accounts en masse" or something
Sorry, I strongly disagree. Comparing detaining someone for 10 days (for, apparently, a genuine violation of immigration law - self-employment on a TN visa) to killing twenty million people is in no way reasonable, and it's certainly not informative or curious. It's just a snarky ideological barb and a violation of those guidelines.
The plainly explained point is that democratic backsliding is gradual. The road to 20 million dead isn't someone suddenly declaring "we are the baddies", then a week later they start digging the mass graves.
If someone appears with invalid paperwork to a border crossing you simply turn them away, or in the case of international flights you keep them in a room for a couple of hours and send them back next flight home. You ban her for X years.
She was in some kind of kafkaesque simulacrum of a legal system with "constitutional free zones" and for-profit "detention" centers. Nobody knew anything inside or outside, only with a considerable amount of resources and luck they we are able to find her in the system. This is closer to the stories of my family during a dictatorship, moving earth and heaven to find close ones in jail when initially the police "didn't know anything about that". They were lucky, a lot of people never found their loved ones.
Sure, the US is not there (yet), but even then she could've been there 10 months or more there if she wasn't Canadian or wealthy.
So no, it's not a "snarky ideological barb" it's a good point that doesn't meet your aesthetic standards, at most the "skeptics like you" part makes it a bit too personal. Your strawman about his point seems worse imo.
> The plainly explained point is that democratic backsliding is gradual. The road to 20 million dead isn't someone suddenly declaring "we are the baddies", then a week later they start digging the mass graves.
This is so important and so often overlooked. The Nazis took power in 1933, but the persecution of e.g. Jews ramped up very gradually. At first, it was mostly boycotts and prohibiting Jews from working in government jobs. In 1935, they were stripped of citizen rights. In 1938, Jews had to change their names and carry a mark in their passport and Jewish children couldn't attend school anymore, and later that year Jewish shops were systematically destroyed and many Jews rounded up and imprisoned. But it wasn't until the start of WWII in 1939 that mass killings actually started taking place, and only in 1942 at the Wannsee conference was the holocaust as we know it today actually planned.
Many Jews stayed in Germany until it was too late because they didn't think that it could get worse.
That ellipsis that you put in my comment really is doing some heavy lifting here. Seems like you ignored everything else I said between those statements. It wasn't about one person being in jail for 10 days at all. I actually didn't mention that because I don't think it's one of the most pressing issues even if it is another example on the pile.
I was responding to someone dismissing concerns as "reflexive hysteria." Historical parallels aren't uncivil, they help examine patterns. The HN guidelines discourage flamewars and personal attacks, neither of which I did. I challenged a characterization, not the person. If discussing historical parallels to current events is now considered inappropriate for HN, that would significantly narrow meaningful conversation beyond what the guidelines actually state.
```
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you—it's been a crazy last few days!
Users flagged that one. We can only guess why users flag things, but there have been so many posts about the current political goings-on that I think there's a lot of fatigue about it. In this case the article was more of an opinion piece than a factual report, so it's probably not one that we'd override the flags on.
Daniel (dang)
```
So the system is setup to allow this abuse. It's weaponizing the flag system. I'm sure this type of flagging is already automated by how fast some posts disappear on /new.
What's to stop someone from buying enough old accounts and mass flagging other topics to chill discussion / dissent? This could easily be done for a few grand. Rotate accounts doing the flagging and make sure they engage in some "high quality" discussion from time to time to avoid detection. Make sure the same groups of accounts aren't flagging the same posts, etc.
E.g. "I never want to see a freaking post about Rust again"...
Note: I had to wait hours to post this comment because my account was rate limited. I'm assuming because I'm involved in this discussion at all: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35157524 Now by the time I can actually post, this thread is well off the front page. This site is really good at effectively silencing people.
Dang, I'd like to know the specific comments where I am going over the line, or are too "low-quality". I have been called out once or twice over the last decade by you, and have agreed that I could have conducted myself better in those instances and tried not to fall back into those patterns.