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Ask HN: Is it possible perma ban nytimes from HN

20 points by elisharobinson ↗ HN
I love HN for primarily the news part , but recently its been over run by toxi click bait from sites such as nytimes. I think HN should make a clear example and ban domains which have a history of toxic click bait. there is a wealth of great news in the new section , but frequently its overshadowed by targeted click bait. Good stuff is dying in new . Im open to change about something as harsh as a ban but a negative weight bias to kill nytimes articles might be a start.

9 comments

[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 30.3 ms ] thread
ktpsns
Well, just don't upvote these posts. That's the natural way of filtering out nytimes if enough people think like you.

What I don't like about nytimes is the paywall. It is just stupid to allow bots to read all content but try to make people pay by allowing them to read a few articles but requiring (payed) login afterwards. This requires tracking people and this can be conterfighted by adblockers, cookie cleaners, etc. Either put all your content behind paywalls or make everything free.

meerita
HN community can upvote or flag websites. Shouldn't be a problem. If the NYT keeps doing shitty content, people will not take it to the homepage. Same as Medium with their walled articles.
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keiferski
I pointed this out months ago. This website is called Hacker News, not Largest Newspaper in the World News. There is really no need for a poorly-written clickbait editorial to be on the front page of HN every day.
sawaruna
A total ban seems extreme. Like others said, if it's a problem for most people the sites won't just get voted enough to appear on thee main page.
racino84
Why don't you get a HN clone that uses the HN api and filter out the URLs/hosts you don't like.

That way you can keep your preference to yourself too.

yitchelle
The front page of HN quite democratic, allowing folks to vote up articles that they liked and find interesting. It works pretty well most of the time.

A permanent ban is pretty extreme because NYT does have some interesting articles and stories in recent months.

baylearn
If an nytimes article (or any article) is not interesting to the HN community, wouldn't it simply not get upvoted and left to decay and rot? Why is a ban needed?

I feel a ban will only serve a minority audience, not the majority of HN who can choose with upvotes.

syrgian
I agree, people are arguing in favor of self-moderation, but if we are here is precisely because we like the moderation.

Pay-walled and lower-than-average quality articles promote people judging the article by the title, going to the comments to actually understand the article's content or post without enough information.

Banning NYTimes would increase average comment quality by forcing the link-poster to find an article readable by everyone, possibly higher quality and less click-baity.