Not routinely; occasionally, when an article clearly fits the site guidelines and the site mandate as described at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. That's not clear with this story. Indeed one can make a somewhat stronger argument that it doesn't: would they cover it on TV news? (yes) — is it evidence of a new phenomenon? (no, unfortunately) — is it likely to turn into a flamewar? (highly). We'd need stronger answers to those questions in order to turn off the flags.
What does seem clear is that most of the community doesn't consider this a good story for HN. If they did, the upvotes would have outweighed the flags, and the opposite was the case. I know a smaller set of users feels passionately the other way, but that's not enough for us to override community opinion. In fact, that would be a strategy for turning HN into a mostly-political site.
Try to find this thread on the front pages of HN...
It's not there, at least in the first 150 results.
It seems to have been unflagged, then "shadow flagged". Which is even more fucked up.
Your first two links are the same btw, did you mean to link to this one,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16577485 , where I asked for a discussion on removal of such an important story? According to moderator 'dang', I was just "creating drama".
Thanks, I meant to link this one, but upon looking again it appears it likely never got enough votes to hit the front page before being flagged/shadowflagged
>The only unusual thing in this case is the drama you've created about it.
I haven't created any drama at all. Many people feel strongly about this and have said so, are they all "creating drama" as well, or is it possible people really give a fuck that this torturer will have an incredible amount of power?
>there's no question that the above submission and your comments are breaking the site guidelines
The only guideline I have broken is the one about vote totals, which I was unaware of and which has special relevance here. You could have asked me to remove it, there was no need to allow the whole thread to be flagged over a straw-man.
It is telling that you claim there is 'no question' about this, when people are questioning it all over this thread.
>Not all political stories are off topic, but the ones that only stir up outrage, however justifiably, and don't also gratify intellectual curiosity, are particularly important to flag.
What?? So, no matter how important a story is, if enough people pretend to be 'outraged' the story must be flagged? Please tell me you see the many things that are wrong with that line of argument. What a despicable thing to say.
There are many comments that agree this is worthy of discussion, the least you can do is allow the conversation to happen - the very least.
This is a critical discussion to have. As it stands, conversation on this topic has been strongly suppressed, and rather than being concerned about that, you're patronizing me, accusing me of creating drama, and implying I want HN to work according to my political views. Please take this all a little bit more seriously and recognize that it's nothing to do with me; but all of us, globally.
I don't doubt that your strong feelings on this topic are sincere and justified. And yes, the word drama is a bit harsh—which I normally avoid. But you really did do some egregious things.
You posted 18 fulminating comments in a row, some of which would normally be bannable offenses (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16577259), sent us demanding and even threatening emails, and posted this off-topic meta-thread trying to gin up outrage about moderation, all because of a routine community action that happens every day on HN. That's what I meant by drama. I'm not going to ban you for posting things like "feck off ya mook" today. Everybody goes on tilt sometimes. But getting banned is the expected outcome for behavior like that, so please don't do it again.
You felt this story should be on HN. Other users felt it shouldn't be. That's normal. The flags won over the upvotes, indicating that the bulk of the community doesn't agree with you. I don't see why your preference should matter more than theirs, especially since the mandate of the site (intellectual curiosity yes, political flamewars no) at first blush points rather in their favor than yours.
We're always fine to hear counterarguments, but when the 'counterargument' consists of calling names like despicable, etc., merely because HN is behaving the way it always has, you actually create a persuasive reason not to give you what you want: you're showing what kind of discussion would result from doing so.
If you want to influence what discussion takes place on HN, you need to do two things. First, you need to really grok the mandate of the site and make your case based on that. Otherwise your argument will amount to demanding that HN be a different kind of site than it is, which doesn't hold water. And you also need to really grok the values of the site (civility and substance yes, snark and attack no) and demonstrate how the discussion you want can adhere to them by adhering to them yourself. Otherwise you'll have influence all right, but in the reverse direction.
I understand how strong these feelings can be and why. Torture is wrong. If we were to let that determine HN moderation, though, HN would soon become only about that and things like that, which would kill HN. We work to make sure that doesn't happen, but not because we don't care about more important matters.
Of course it's routine, and you guys mostly showed your unfamiliarity with the site by acting like you uncovered some shocking new scandal in Hacker News users flagging the political news of the day off the front page.
You'd do better to familiarize yourselves with what HN is and how it works before jumping to confrontational conclusions, stimulating though that is. It's not as if any of this is secret.
I also believe this is a terribly important topic to discuss, with special relevance for the HN community (not that I need to prove that, the number of comments speaks for itself).
I have emailed the mods, and will update with the reply I get (if I don't end up banned).
Our email address is all over the place but the best way to find it is via https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, so you get a refresher on the site rules before you email us. Sometimes a question will answer itself along the way.
The CIA employ what percentage of the tech community again? Maybe this shouldn't be considered an entirely political story, given the ramifications it has for all of us.
I am sorry but no one is stopping you from discussing the ramifications on other platforms like Reddit etc, or messaging like whatsapp or on phone with friends or family. What you are currently asking is HN to enforce you viewpoint on what should be discussed.
There were plenty of active commenters, most of them considering this a very serious issue.
And no one has been able to offer any explanation why my comment is permanently collapsed even when opened on a different browser, despite no obvious flag and a healthy amount of positive votes.
Finally, as I've said elsewhere here, there appears to be evidence of "silent de-ranking" where stories like the one about Google's censorship are not flagged in any way but won't show up on the front pages.
As a community HN deserves better, by far. Normalising this behaviour will lead to dark and bad places.
This story from 3 months ago is as tech-related (Google changing their algorithm) as you can get. It wasn't visibly flagged, but was almost certainly de-ranked, and it wasn't just me who commented about it.
Even if you can buy the excuse that this isn't related to tech or start-ups, and ignore the very active commenting on it, you're still left with the utter refusal to allow any transparency about what is flagged and de-ranked. Why shouldn't we demand better?
Oh look it's happening again. The people who think this article might not be "drivel" are being grayed within minutes.
And by the way, this censorship happens on tech stories too. This article from three months ago wasn't even flagged, just didn't show up until page 3 or 4 despite being new and having tons of comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15745363.
