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Ask HN: Has anyone else noticed posts critical of Musk being flagged?

27 points by southernplaces7 ↗ HN
Over the last several days I've seen several examples of completely comment-worthy, rational posts that have pointed out criticism of Elon Musk's conduct from other sources or criticized it themselves getting flagged very quickly. It seems that in all cases, they've rapidly been flagged despite covering information or debate that's perfectly reasonable for a site that shares noteworthy information about the world of tech. Needless to say, specific links about odd behavior from of the world's richest tech billionaire would presumably fall under a valid category..

It's a curious thing. I know that HN allows (rather stupidly I think) almost anyone among its readers to arbitrarily flag a post for whatever reason of their own, but you'd think that this would be monitored for signs of agenda-based flaggings. Apparently, frequently not.

7 comments

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ggm
I think it goes either way. I've posted some adverse remarks about him and I could relate to other people saying "this is tedious and isn't adding to the debate"

I happen to think his tech and financial chops are overrated. Bezos I think, has really solid financials. Both of them have good insight into aspects of market dynamics and are excellent at making money by employing smart people.

Where I come unstuck is their anti union and asocial behaviours, ownership of media, telecommunications and now quite actively "hostile" positions in political spaces like the eu. But.. now I'm being argumentative and I can relate to other people saying "c'mon man, that's tedious"

So .. it depends.

talldayo
Hacker News has fickle guidelines around politics that can justify flagging anything post-hoc. There is no hard-and-fast rule banning Musk posts but almost anything mentioning him does tend to get sandbagged these days. Here's a cheat sheet for which politics this site considers offensive since it's confusing to me too:

Ukraine, Russia, Syria, China, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia = Holistic, ethical and apolitical conversation.

Israel/Gaza, Trump, Socialism, IMF, Musk = Subversive flamebait and grounds for banning your account.

legitster
I will regularly flag articles critical of Musk if they are not substantive enough. I think most sane people are already quite well aware of Musk's exploits and his influence and overall problematic nature. If there is something new being reported, I'm interested. But there are dozens if not hundreds of submissions everyday that just a blog post about why billionaires suck. They really don't really draw interesting or substantive comments and he already gets enough free publicity on the rest of the internet.
elpocko
On my semi-automatic flag on sight list: Musk, Trump, US politics, AI hate, "Has anyone else" questions
southernplaces7
>On my semi-automatic flag on sight list

Really? Despite knowing that a flag can cause content posts to no longer be open to comments or even visible, you arbitrarily decide to attempt fucking over someone else's attempts at debate and communication just because you have a nose sniff at the subject matter? And you do this "semi automatically?"

The emotional maturity or lack of it among some visitors to this site is worthy of a YouTube comments thread. Laughable.