Maybe it’s related to their decision to turn YCombinator into a “safe space” for very specific people; or the way YC takes steps to silence some voices while hiding the fact that they’re silenced. These are deliberate decisions that cause the site to work very differently than naive people envision it from working.
I’m not crazy enough to sue over that shit; but somebody might be.
It's hard to tell what these dark insinuations refer to, but there's nothing (that I'm aware of) that hasn't been fully explained many times—nor are there any questions we don't answer. If you're talking about shadowbanning, for example, there's plenty of explanation at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23686672 and the links back from there.
If you're going to make a claim like that, you should supply links so readers can make up their own minds. When people don't do that, it's usually because the real story is rather different than they're making out. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
I may be mistaken, but I believe that with your previous accounts that we were aware of, the "real genuine content" was pretty trollish. When users keep creating accounts like that, we stop telling them that we're banning them, because they know perfectly well what they're doing, as do we. This is all explained at the links I mentioned upthread.
We do make mistakes, and when we find out about them, we apologize and try to correct things. But shadowbanning accounts that are innocently posting "real genuine content" isn't anything we normally do.
For sure, the site worked differently prior to 2014. I'm talking about how we've operated since then. 7 years is an internet eternity! Though I suppose I should be thankful that people are still talking about things that happened in 2013 because it means they still care.
HN was moderated differently in the early years because pg was running it in whatever hours he could eke out between running YC and having small children. That was a totally different situation than now. It's a miracle the site stayed up at all.
It's not clear why that account was banned, unless it was related to other accounts that did bad things? (You don't have to answer that.) In any case, I've unbanned it now and restored the affected posts, in case that's helpful.
I always assumed it was because the name looked like spam nonsense, which is why I put the explanation in this one. I got over it pretty quickly, but thank you for the gesture.
I don't think HN ever used to ban accounts for that reason. It must have been something else. We might be able to figure out what from the logs, but that's time-consuming and probably not worth it.
You are, in fact, mistaken. If you go back far enough, you hit a high quality account banned for a stupid reason, without notice, warning, or discussion. After that one you’ll find accounts that shitpost, but before that... good stuff!
But there’s no value in arguing over this. I long ago decided it was more fun to burn the bridge (by rudely stating things that are true) on this set of browser/cookies/account/IPs. I’m not going to dox myself to prove that your second paragraph was wrong. Especially when I concede that _after_ I got banned stupidly and unfairly, I decided to fight back by becoming ban-worthy.
The “optimist” in me thinks your a decent person who happens to have some big blind spots and biases, and you might eventually figure out how to address them if you meet the right set of people and start to learn from folks who don’t look like you. Maybe you’d realize that there are a collection of things that HN encourages, all of which contribute to a “safe space” for certain people, while excluding others.
I hope my optimistic view is eventually right.
Edit: thank you to the peer post to this comment that gives an example of this happening to them a long time ago. I didn’t want to dox myself to show it’s a real thing.
I’m adding this as an ‘edit’ instead of a reply to the peer post because this account is just barely allowed to post at all.
If, like the other commenter, you're talking about something that happened over 7 years ago, the situation back then was different, as I've explained above. When I talk about how we moderate HN, I mean now and in recent years.
7 years is surely long enough to establish a new moderation policy on a website. If that's really the reason why you're still abusing HN after all this time, I think you should reconsider.
The notion that HN is well-moderated is bizarre. HN is exceptionally hostile to those who hold beliefs contrary to HN-acceptable norms.
If you want to get banned quickly, criticize pg portfolio companies (even politely, with valid criticism), point out that white supremacist and other hate speech is welcomed so long as it is polite; point out that responses to hate speech are _not_ tolerated.....
The community here used to be absolutely amazing. 10-15 years ago the discussions here were actionable, and I was able to make valuable professional connections in the the comments.
These days, that doesn’t happen. The discussions are lower value, less open minded, and more strident. It’s a pile of shit.
And candidly, that’s why I’m logged into a banned account to post this. Uncomfortable truths can’t be posted from IPs/cookies/users that you want to preserve. Daniel Gackle will ban your ass if you point out, for example, that he tolerates and even welcomes extremely bigoted shit.
> If you want to get banned quickly, criticize pg portfolio companies
I've done that. Not been banned.
> point out that white supremacist and other hate speech is welcomed so long as it is polite
Well, I mean, aside from being false, that’s also going to often be a specific labelling of something here as “white supremacist” or “hate speech”; flagging exists pretty specifically to deal with content where that description actually applies without sidetracking conversations with incendiary debate about whether it does. So, yeah, comments doing that will be flagged and moderated and, if thet persist, will likely get you banned.
> And candidly, that’s why I’m logged into a banned account to post this.
If it was banned, you couldn’t post from it. So, since you obviously can, I assume you are misrepresenting the facts when you call it a banned account.
All their comments start dead. People call it shadow banning or hell banning. And some other accounts have [banned] after the name but keep commenting.
Comments by banned accounts are killed by software, but other users can vouch for them to unkill them (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html). That's what happened in both of those cases.
I'm not sure about the companies but pg's stuff regularly gets criticized on here (even harshly sometimes, I think). Just a few days ago, there was one such story (highly upvoted) on the front page in response to one of pg's essays.
> If you want to get banned quickly, criticize pg portfolio companies (even politely, with valid criticism), point out that white supremacist and other hate speech is welcomed so long as it is polite; point out that responses to hate speech are _not_ tolerated.....
I don't think this is true, or I just don't see any evidence it. Take a look a this HN yesterday thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26782031. Neither PG nor his YC companies are immune to criticism.
If you express some completely heinous ideas in polite, mostly grammatical writing then normally you will not be banned. This is based on my experience of over a decade of various accounts and occasional banning on "Hacker" News.
>point out that white supremacist and other hate speech is welcomed so long as it is polite; point out that responses to hate speech are _not_ tolerated.....
To be fair, much of the overtly racist and bigoted content I've seen lately has gotten voted down and flagged, and I've seen Dan step in and stand against it on a few occasions. I don't know if this is the result of a shift in my perceptions or in the community, but to me it seems like things were far worse a few years ago, and now at least a few of the notorious bad accounts have been banned. It's certainly not a paradise, God knows any time race, religion or gender comes up this place often winds up validating its execrable reputation, but I do think the mods are trying. It's not their fault the tech community is being taken over by incels and neo-reactionary fascists.
> These days, that doesn’t happen. The discussions are lower value, less open minded, and more strident. It’s a pile of shit.
The decline of open-mindedness is what I've noticed the most. The assumption of good intention on the part of someone with an opposing view. The willingness to at least entertain a thought or argument, even if you ultimately don't accept it. Much easier to just hit the down-arrow and move on, satisfied in knowing that wrongthink was punished with a nice -1.
There are definitely points of view here, no matter how well articulated, that will be buried in low-contrast purgatory very quickly. And I'm not just talking about "white supremacy" type stuff.
> Much easier to just hit the down-arrow and move on, satisfied in knowing that wrongthink was punished with a nice -1.
This is good, do this. The worst thing in threads IMO is endless subthreads attached to low-effort troll comments. Just downvote and move on. If the comment contains a factual misstatement, maybe post a quick note saying why it is incorrect, with a reference.
This is the crux of the matter, how do you know a comment is a troll, rather than an honestly held and expressed contraversial view? parent's point is that you can't in general. So it's up to defaults: default to assuming bad faith and you will be rewarded with swift oppression of trolls but also honest mavericks whose contraversy help stir things up and invigorate discussions, default to assuming good faith and you tolerate both with mixed results. There is no easy answer.
Recommended read on this is Paul Graham's "What you can't say"[0], a timeless piece on how the bathwater of offensive and unpopular opinions always contain the baby of non-conformist truth, and you don't know in advance which is which, so you need to tolerate the first lest it is actually the second in disguise.
There are many commenters who post abusively, but in my experience it is not the case that they're posting in bad faith. I think that is actually rather rare. Users are far too quick to assume this about each other.
> The willingness to at least entertain a thought or argument, even if you ultimately don't accept it. Much easier to just hit the down-arrow and move on, satisfied in knowing that wrongthink was punished with a nice -1.
Yes, but at least unpleasant discussions usually just stop at that, unlike Reddit or even worse Twitter where you get a shitstorm of insults.
I think that decline of willingness happened in society at large. It's simply now reaching hackernews. There is very little that can be done to fix this at the level of HN. It will probably require a shift in broader society.
As someone that just stopped lurking, it's clear downvoting is used primarily as a "disagree" button. Case in point, this comment I'm replying to. I believe they're making a meaningful contribution to this discussion. Yet the downvotes have already commenced.
No the problem is that he makes accusations that are not backed up by any data and this is contrary to the guidelines.
I consider myself more of a leftist than your typical hn user and when I have been abnormally downvoted I never felt it was because of my opinion but rather because I was too hot headed or too ignorant about what I was talking about.
So I am very concerned by those claims but without any data about presumed tolerance to bigotry stuff, they are of no value too anyone. Anybody could feel sore and angry about how some social online gathering is not as X as he wish he was. Heck, that's my life on Reddit.
Gimme data, gimme sources, I'll vote you up.
The person you're replying to is shadowbanned, and their post actually got vouched for, but still (I think) starts off at a deficit.
Looking at your comment history, it looks like you enjoy wading into political conversations with strongly-held opinions. Food for thought, I'd have downvoted some of your comments that I agree with because they bring down the quality of the conversation.
Just remember that that will only give the part of the story which is linked to that one username.
Commenters who post grand narratives about why they were banned typically have a long string of past banned accounts. The giveaway is that they never link to them. That would let readers make up their own minds about why they'd gotten banned, and how accurate their story really is.
You're going to get downvoted and flagged to hell, but I mostly agree with your comment - there was a precipitous quality drop that came with the heavy moderation that people now think of as the identifying characteristic of HN. That being said, I think that after a few egregious missteps (such as the test ban on "politics"), the heavy moderation has been open and kind. I also suspect that there has been some mod meddling to keep my lefty-ass comments visible more than once.
I would like to point out that this is a silicon valley/SF tech forum; considering the demo, to mod out all of the vile sexist/race-realist objectivist bleating would be crushing. Just argue back. The left-liberal addiction to manager-calling is ruining their ability to defend their positions, heavily moderated "safe spaces" really become places where people can repeat their beliefs by rote, free from challenges. The reason libertarians are wrong is because their philosophy is intellectually bankrupt, not because it's upsetting. Practice in putting them down refines your own beliefs.
> If you want to get banned quickly, criticize pg portfolio companies (even politely, with valid criticism), point out that white supremacist and other hate speech is welcomed so long as it is polite; point out that responses to hate speech are _not_ tolerated.....
>
> The community here used to be absolutely amazing. 10-15 years ago the discussions here were actionable, and I was able to make valuable professional connections in the the comments.
>
> These days, that doesn’t happen. The discussions are lower value, less open minded, and more strident. It’s a pile of shit.
>
> And candidly, that’s why I’m logged into a banned account to post this. Uncomfortable truths can’t be posted from IPs/cookies/users that you want to preserve. Daniel Gackle will ban your ass if you point out, for example, that he tolerates and even welcomes extremely bigoted shit.
This entire comment is one of the most closed-minded, "lower value" comments I've seen on HN recently.
Complaining about how comments aren't open-minded, and also that "hate speech" and "bigoted shit" is the norm is something of a contradiction. If one is open-minded, he should be tolerant even of "hate speech." He should also be open to the ideas that hate speech is both very real or not real at all. Censoriousness is inextricably closed-minded.
I can't speak to PG portfolio criticism, but I think dang does yeoman's work in moderation. Only once have I seen a decision that I thought was harsh, and I think everyone is entitled to a bad day every now and then.
If you walked into my house and started berating and insulting me, I'd probably have a dim view of you, too.
Also, how are you posting from a banned account? That seems to go against the nature of being banned.
Hate speech is a priori not very reasonable so getting rid of it is not a matter a censorship but of getting rid of what stand in the way of thoughtful discussions.
Also I don't think "in my house" metaphor has had much success. Which seems fair : Hacker News is not PG's house, although it is his baby, he handed moderation power over to the users, the algorithm and the moderators. Which is why we like it and trust it and use it. You can't just compare anything to one on one relationships, it does not work like that.
Given your claims of "white supremacist and other hate speech is welcomed [...] extremely bigoted shit" being both completely inconsistent with my experience, and the specific things that you are claiming are present, it seems far more likely that you've been banned for the kinds of social authoritarianism (trying to control the speech and thoughts of others) that is particularly popular among a certain political faction lately than those things actually being prevalent and accepted.
He didn’t present any evidence of his conspiracy theory though.
I would be willing to bet actual money that his imagined conspiracy theory didn’t exist, and that two things happened simultaneously, but without relation: scam apps existed, and Apple tried to buy him.
The notion that Apple would engage in widespread conspiracy to save a million bucks strikes me as bizarre.
Did you read the article? The claim is that Apple delayed and denied app approval while trying to acquire the app, while approving the scam apps and approving other apps that incorporated his tech.
ETA: I find the dismissive reference to “conspiracy theories” to be a little weird. It’s not as though there isn’t a rich history of abuse of monopoly power, including restricting access to market. It’s unclear why FAANG companies would be uniquely immune to such temptations.
> It’s unclear why FAANG companies would be uniquely immune to such temptations.
The risk/reward makes it seem absurdly unlikely that Apple actually did this.
1. Approving scam apps hurts Apple.
2. Approving scam apps in order to screw with a competitor hurts Apple, and would need a widespread conspiracy within the company to do it successfully.
3. There is plenty of money to be made in attacking Apple either directly through a settlement, or indirectly.
I think RileyJames’ comment provided a clear and realistic hypothesis of how Apple might come to abuse its monopoly power in this way without the sort of reasoning you assume, but it’s also probably relevant to note that Apple got caught conspiring with five major publishers to fix ebook prices largely because they had a private dinner where one of the publishing CEOs took literal notes on their conspiracy to fix prices. (Yes, really.)
Apple has been really dumb about antitrust law before. It’s not unrealistic to think they’d be dumb again. It’s not even dumb if you’ve been doing it routinely for years and only suffered consequences once or twice. Which I don’t think is unique to Apple — I think all the FAANG companies have gotten very accustomed to being able to do essentially whatever they want as long as they pay a minor fine every few years.
> Apple has been really dumb about antitrust law before. It’s not unrealistic to think they’d be dumb again. It’s not even dumb if you’ve been doing it routinely for years and only suffered consequences once or twice.
This logic might have held 5 years ago but doesn’t hold now. All the large tech companies are under heavy scrutiny and there are multiple anti-trust cases in play. The US administration appears to be anti-trust friendly, and there are hostile companies deliberately backing as many anti-trust actions as they can against Apple.
It makes no sense to imagine they would play into this for a minor discount on purchasing a trivial app.
It’s just as likely likely that a lawyer and an angry developer think it’s worth seeking a settlement in the current climate.
I agree there are hypotheses by which they could have done this but it’s bullshit to assume they must have done this.
I’m curious about why you talk about Apple as though it’s a monolithic entity making coherent decisions. Tim Cook doesn’t need to have signed off on his himself as part of a grand strategy for it to have happened, and indeed the only evidence we do have available indicates that monopoly abuse of power is a tactic Apple has deliberately used before. Even if this is, as RileyJames posits, just the head of one team asking another for a favor in pursuit of an acquisition, it speaks to the corporate culture at Apple. Regardless, given the balance of actual evidence, it seems more absurd to extend the benefit of the doubt to the corporation that has abused market power in the past.
And while I don’t know if this was deliberate or a mistake, I think the more interesting point is that even if it was a mistake it demonstrates the danger of monopoly. The problem is structural. When a company has the market dominance of the FAANG companies, abuse is inevitable.
> the only evidence we do have available indicates that monopoly abuse of power is a tactic Apple has deliberately used before.
Yes, they fell foul of anti-trust law in Ebook pricing.
> Even if this is, as RileyJames posits, just the head of one team asking another for a favor in pursuit of an acquisition,
That’s just a made up explanation. It’s not ‘evidence’.
> it speaks to the corporate culture at Apple.
There is no evidence for this at all.
Remember, it’s just something a commenter made up. It’s not information about Apple, so it can’t ‘speak to Apple’s culture’.
> Regardless, given the balance of actual evidence, it seems more absurd to extend the benefit of the doubt to the corporation that has abused market power in the past.
At least you are clear about what you are actually saying:
You are going to assume Apple is guilty of this because they violated antitrust law over ebook pricing*, and that is your only evidence.
I sincerely doubt they think they'll get actionable ideas. It seems like a fun recruiting play from a company that takes pride in hiring non-traditional talent.
I knew and didn't care. If you care, you're going to be real upset when you look at your other alternatives.
That said, I don't think many people here actually care. I firmly believe that most of the people on this site just like to shit on Apple, because they prefer that to trust their privacy to an Advertising company.
That number doesn't match what the SSA publishes in their annual reports.[1]. They put the figure on disability at 8.9 million disabled workers, with 11.2 million total beneficiaries once you include the disabled workers' children.)
That said, the real figures are still startling. They represents 4.4% of the US worker population but some states rely incredibly heavily on the program.
Alabama - 8.0% of the population
Arkansas - 7.9% of the population
Kentucky - 7.6% of the population
Maine - 7.4% of the population
Mississippi - 7.5% of the population
West Virginia - 8.6% of the population
No idea why this was downvoted into oblivion, so I vouched for it. It seems to state factual information and cites direct sources. The information presented is located on page 29. Maybe instead of just drive-by downvoting, you can state some reasoning for doing so.
I’m not crazy enough to sue over that shit; but somebody might be.