HN Explorer

Ask HN: why are posts about Elon Musk and DOGE getting quickly flagged?

45 points by camillomiller ↗ HN
This is worrying. Clearly a large part of this community is insterested in burying relevant and potentially criminal behaviour by the tech elite. Is anybody planning to do anything or are we just letting this indirect censorship pollute the community? Because you know, it definitely does look like pro-Musk brigading is going on on HN right now.

52 comments

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14
I haven't seen any posts myself but maybe they are considered off topic as per the HN guidelines.
bell-cot
Other than spew words at each other on a little niche web site (HN), nobody here can actually "do anything" about Musk, DOGE, or the tech elite.

If you want to talk about those things, there are lots of other web sites - bigger and more important ones - where they are being discussed. Go for it.

From the flagging, I'd assume that plenty of people here want a refuge from all that useless talk and arguments and unhappiness.

jimnotgym
I read stuff like this on Hn because there is often detailed critical responses. I think that is something we can definitely add
Tadpole9181
Might as well totally shut down the site with that logic? HN is not a place to "do anything" about anything. It's a place for discussion and sharing news/content.
archagon
HN has a disproportionate impact in the tech scene. I would not be surprised if some of the key players actually read this site. (I know Yarvin has been here in the past, for example.)
cinntaile
9 out of 10 times it's ragebait, the whole point is to get media attention. Don't waste your time on that. The discussions that follow are low quality.
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palmfacehn
Low quality discussions and partisan reportage. We could use a few sources which elaborate on why cutting spending is legitimate, how funds have been abused and the statutory authority of the executive over government bureaus. We don't have to agree, but we've been browbeaten with the other side's arguments all week.
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camillomiller
And, just like DOGE arbitrarily decides what is waste and fraud, you get to decide that critical reportage is “partisan”. Great.
thinkingemote
Do you want to understand or do you want to express an opinion?

Is your question something that can be answered and lead to greater understanding or is it not designed to be answered?

There is a type of thinking that deadens the mind and stops understanding. Some ideas are mind killers stopping any further thought. Many people in us vs them situations do not want to understand the other and in group psychology, understanding the other leads to a weaker group. Groups (e.g. politics) therefore are inherently against empathy with those outside the in-group.

One way I noticed I'm in a bubble is when I come up with my own explanations for others behaviour without wanting to actually interact and understand with them. Then I can begin to break down those borders and see myself in the other.

We are asked to be more thoughtful and kind on HN. How can we do this consciously? How can questions and discussions be created that encourage understanding between people?

camillomiller
Honestly, I am really just worried that there is a pro-Musk brigading going on. Considering what is happening, that's not a far-fetched hypotesis. I am very open to discussion, but the advice to be "nice and considerate" in extreme cases like this one can be easily be hijacked into gaslighting by people with a specific agenda. That's the - I believe reasonable - doubt I was casting.
anenefan
Stuff like that is flagged for no other reason two more like topics have been submitted and marked dead in the hours before, as well as not befitting the spirit of HN aiming to be a place that likes to avoid politics unless of particular interest. I would say turn on show dead even briefly to see how much the same topic gets repeated over and over and over.

I would speculate there are plenty of people who are horrified in terms of breach of procedures and protocols as the new installed govt tries to rewrite the rules, who could write a couple pages of serious implications in the aftermath when new management takes over in 4, 8 or however many years to redo all the things that were not done as per the US constitution and with regard to stringent security protocols - it'll cost a pretty penny. However to many such speculation on mass is not very interesting either.

pvg
There doesn't seem to be any evidence of 'pro-Musk brigading', though. It's pretty standard HN-y response to repetition. Happens a lot with big stories that get a lot of reporting and we're in a period of an absolute torrent of stories and their many followups.
swat535
Allow me to remind you that HN is a diverse, international community with various opposing view points, cultures and philosophical outlooks.

There is no "pro-Musk" brigading going on and more to it, while important, the world does not revolve around America and its internal politics.

Some of these posts get flagged because the community feel like the matter has been sufficiently discussed and rather make room for other topics.

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[dead] psytrancefan
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kekpopzed
The appreciation of opera died a long time ago? Completely false. Pick a major city and google its name plus “season opera passes” before you pop off without facts.
kekpopzed
Or just downvote me because you’re wrong.
jimnotgym
I think a portion of the flagging is boredom, but it seems to happen very quickly.

I wonder if it is bots, or perhaps some people are so invested (perhaps literally) in the Musk companies that they have a strong incentive to stop criticism?

elpocko
My HN RSS feed (newest posts with at least 10 points; I think I'm gonna have to raise that number) is basically useless because it's mostly Elon Musk and other US politics drama. People repeatedly complaining about spammy off-topic posts being flagged and making up conspiracy theories about it is the sugar on top. I am so tired of this.

Take a hint, people.

onnnon
Exactly, the overall quality of my HN feed has gone down significantly.
black_puppydog
We're very sorry that the happenings in this branch of reality are not to your taste. What news would you prefer to be presented with?
defrost
If you're seeking an answer in good faith, scroll back through:

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang

There are Elon Musk + DOGE threads up and active and still taking new comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments

it's the relentless repetition that's mostly causing flagging.

Posted threads still appear on https://news.ycombinator.com/newest, even if [flagged] acttive threads appear on the RSS feed, and commenting is still visible on /newcomments.

"Buried" here really means that political threads aren't appearing on the front page of a primarily technical and industry news site.

There's still a lot of community discussion tacking place.

fzeroracer
Some of it is because of redundancy (ie, multiple posts on the same topic), but a lot of it is an immediate reaction to anything negative about Elon Musk. This means that posts that can't overcome that reaction with vouches or a mod stepping in end up dying quickly. There's a few people that will argue that 'there's nothing to really do or discuss about it, ergo it should be flagged' but plenty of other topics along those same lines reach the front page. Usually stuff along the line of other culture war topics.

For example of stuff flagged on reaction, this post [1] (AI Startup School with Elon Musk, by ycombinator) was flagged for a long period of time and only recently got out of being flag-killed. A better example is this post by Krebs [2] which went deep into the history of one of the highlighted members of DOGE, their connection to cybercrime and more despite being well researched.

I think the way to describe it is that tech is going through the same political fracturing and reckoning as the rest of society. As hard as tech has tried to put on the facade of being apolitical, when you've got ycombinator inviting Elon Musk for talks or pg talking about the dangers of woke it was inevitable for HN to become more and more political over time.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42973989

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42979187

[dead] thrance
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zb3
> who gave them the right to decide what we discuss here?

The same person who decided that there should be a "flag" button.

[dead] thrance
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zb3
I can only flag, it is the admins of the site who decide what to do with users' flags.

For me, it is indeed off-topic as it's purely political, especially considering you're not seeing any articles that describe the results of this "whistleblowing" (as I see it, this angle is of course not present on HN, but would certainly be if the sides were reversed).

thrance
I understand, but can't help but feel the rules are applied a bit inconsistently. Paul Graham's "anti-woke" manifesto was allowed to hit the front page unscathed but somehow my post is too political for HN.
cinntaile
A (very) simple heuristic. If it has Musk in the title while it's not necessary; it's clickbait and it probably doesn't fulfill the "intellectual curiosity" requirement for ontopic posts.
thrance
Paul Graham's "anti-woke" manifesto reached the front page and stayed there for days unscathed but my post was deemed too political.

I understand my post wouldn't fit a strict interpretation of HN's rules, but I don't feel like these rules are applied very consistently.

[dead] camillomiller
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cinntaile
Musk "news" is usually terribly boring so I'm quite grateful I'm not the only one who shares that opinion. I get that he cracked the code to be in the news 24/7 but we really don't need to act as his megaphone.

It's a bit ironic that people that don't agree with your worldview have a limited worldview. Shouldn't you be above that as an enlightened member of this community?

camillomiller
People that don't agree with me are people that I gladly have constructive debates with. What I'm talking about are people wringing tech as a baseball bat to destroy democracy, the followers and apologists of the Peter Thiels of this world. It's not a matter of views there, it's a matter of saving the society our grandparents have fought the nazis for.
elpocko
You've never submitted anything before, but now was the perfect time to pile on and post some more Musk related bait. Because there isn't enough of that already?

I wouldn't normally flag that because it's not off topic, but there's just too much boring Elon Musk spam. The HN feed is clogged with redundant crap.

The mass flagging is justified, it's within the site's rules, and it keeps the front page interesting. Keep flagging, my dudes.

thrance
I feel like the unprecedentedness of the situation regarding what Musk is currently doing warrants at least this level of attention and scrutiny. As it is closely related to tech in general, I don't see it as too out of place on HN.

Furthermore, I think an enforcement of a literal reading of HN's rules would be no fun at all, and indeed, these rules are not enforced that way, usually.

elpocko
Yes they are always enforced that way. Redundant and off-topic content is always handled like this; a reasonable amount is allowed, the rest gets flagged. There's several huge threads discussing Musk/DOGE on HN, dang even said it's the most discussed topic ever on HN. The redundant ones get flagged for good reason. Politics in general is off-topic and therefore also flagged by many users.

What you're seeing is a justified reaction from bored and annoyed users. My HN feed is at least 50% Musk and DOGE. That's insane.

IMO there should be a pinned "mega"thread on the frontpage. That's not gonna happen, but it would resolve the conflict and prevent most of the spam.

palmfacehn
Without characterizing you personally as an alarmist, every alarmist or apocalyptic take is characterized as an emergency or unprecedented. Yet in most every case, the predictions of doom were false. Irrational fear is used to stir up hysteria.

I don't know that this is specific to the HN guidelines, but hysterical partisan doom is what I see, from my own subjective interpretation. When I try to discuss specifics, the discussion generally derails into derangement.

insane_dreamer
there's a lot of posts about Elon because there's a lot going on involving Elon -- new stuff happening on a daily basis -- that has a major impact (irrespective of whether readers agree with Elon or not)

so yeah, highly relevant, whether you think it's boring or not

elpocko
It's not just me who flags it. Politics is off topic and gets flagged, whether you think it's relevant or not. Reposting the same crap 100 times is not going to help. Why not discuss it elsewhere because it's clearly not wanted here.
insane_dreamer
What Elon and DOGE are doing is not just politics but very relevant technically, whether you think it's relevant or not. Tech used to be mostly separate from politics, which was wonderful, but unfortunately the self-proclaimed uber-engineer Elon decided he wanted to become MOTU, and so here we are.

If I flagged everything I thought was boring on HN, I'd be flagging over half the posts.

Everyone has a different subset of stuff they find interesting and care about, and can ignore the rest that they think is irrelevant/boring/crap. You don't need to flag stuff you don't find interesting, or "boring" or "crap" as you put it. You can just ignore it. So why flag it? Because it pushes a button you don't like?

elpocko
I flag it mostly because a single topic and an insane number of dupes are flooding my feed, making it basically useless. I want to see much less of the off-topic spam; flagging is the only effective way to signal that. So yes, it pushes "a button I don't like." I'm getting tired of explaining this simple thing.
IAmGraydon
If it's the kind of topic that creates hateful rhetoric, we're going to flag it, and fast. This is exactly where every single Trump/Musk/Doge/whatever thread goes, and it's not what HN is here for. If you want to scream your political opinions into the void, do it elsewhere. We are here to wonder and create, not to waste our lives talking about politics. I, for one, am glad that there are enough of us here that believe HN is truly a bastion of intelligent discourse and are protecting that.

As an aside, you should seriously consider why you think anything you don't like is a conspiracy against you. That kind of thinking is indicative of mental illness, and it's simply everywhere these days. Do some critical thinking.

camillomiller
Wow. And your way to keep up the intelligent discourse is calling a critical voice “mentally ill” after using a straw man argument (claiming I think everyone is “against me”, which I never expressed)? What about you do some critical thinking assessing your own entitlement?
gond
>not to waste our lives talking about politics.

In case you are an U.S. citizen, I wish you good luck living your life if everything around erodes. And before you ask, no, there is not a single bit of irony in this post, sadly.