The Hacker News mods should comment why this post has been 'bumped' from the top spot and why it's title is no longer the original title of the article.
A moderator replaced the original title (which was absolutely as linkbait as they come) with a representative phrase from the article. This topic has been discussed extensively already, so this article received many user flags as well as the standard penalty for follow-on posts.
For example was on the front page for less than 2 minutes before disappearing with zero discussion nor reasoning. Even though it contains extremely Hacker News friendly analysis and discussion.
HN needs to come clean, is the no politics rule continuing? Or are the politics of the moderators or the "politics deemed appropriate" going to continue to rule?
> HN needs to come clean, is the no politics rule continuing? Or are the politics of the moderators or the "politics deemed appropriate" going to continue to rule?
You're not asking this question fairly or charitably, but that story wasn't touched by moderators. The detailed mechanics of the site are not completely transparent for obvious reasons. On the flip side, we're happy to explain when the community has specific questions. The best way to ask those is via email at hn@ycombinator.com.
I get you'd like to avoid spammers, bots and etc, but its not at all fair to claim you're not playing politics.
> but that story wasn't touched by moderators.
Is uncharitable as it gets. I cannot verify it. Based on 3163 days of intuition I can see "ahh yes sometimes stories get unfairly flagged automatically" but I can I also see that 1) Its political 2) It discusses a YC company in a not so appealing light.
I'll take your word on it here that nobody touched it, but I honestly see stories disappearing every day whenever they so much as negatively glance at YC/Investments or Politics that benefit YC and YC Investments. (Many former YC companies will more than likely benefit from being able to purchase our browsing history, for example.)
Let me try to allay your concerns. The story you linked to was penalized automatically. There's no moderator penalty on it. No moderator may even have seen it.
It's common—standard, in fact—for politically committed HN users to believe that the site is secretly aligned against their politics. That's mostly not because it is; it's because humans typically perceive their side to be at a disadvantage. I wrote about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13932041, with links to plenty more.
You'll notice I said "mostly". That's because I have no way of guaranteeing that our own biases (which, being human, we have) don't affect moderation. I can't even guarantee that to myself. But we do work hard at it and have a lot of practice. If you know of any large community on the internet where that's more true than it is here, I'd like to see it.
Lack of bias is never perceived as 'lack of bias'; it's perceived as strong bias in favor of the opposing side, in proportion to the strength of one's own views. That's unfortunate for us, but it's how the human nature cookie crumbles.
Can you verify any of the above? Not fully, nor could you with more data. A quantum of trust is necessary for a community to function. If we say we didn't moderate a story and someone doesn't believe us (meaning, among other things, that they think we'd be dumb enough to lie), I doubt there's much we can do.
If you still have concerns, feel free to send them to hn@ycombinator.com.
Thanks for the detailed followup. I will admit that I have been less than charitable.
If this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404 had never happened I would have far fewer concerns. Since that week I've been keeping an eye on all posts that vanish from the front page or get severely punished and politics seems to get the axe more than not. Again this is N=1 and not a "study" and contains all of my biases.
Sorry for being disgruntled. I overreacted to what I perceived to be a policy that has continued for over a week.
I did one google search and found https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc-isp... and is fully sourced by generally reputable data. I'd be just as pissed if Democrats sold us down the river, which I am about Obamacare several years ago.
From the https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:
> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.
The title is the original, it wasn't misleading and it isn't 'linkbait'. Its the premise of the article and it's the truth.
dang please help me out here.