Comment on The Mysterious Forces Steering Views on Hacker News
dgdft@lemmy.world 5 days ago
To spare anyone else the click, this is about one blogger malding that his flamebait posts got flagged.
First post cited was about leaving Element/Matrix because they’re bad, second was an Omarchy showcase.
very_well_lost@lemmy.world 5 days ago
I don’t know, I think they make a reasonable case to suggest that someone is putting their finger on the scale.
But, honestly… duh? Y Combinator is one of the most influential investment firms in Silicon Valley. Of course they’re going to try to protect the image of their chosen investments.
Honestly the bigger story here is that people in tech continue to be so willfully ignorant of stuff like this. Big Tech is not benevolent. If you want unbiased tech news, don’t fucking get it from a company that has such a vested interest in the success of SV tech companies. You’d think that would be obvious.
dgdft@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Did I miss something? They didn’t post any real evidence at all unless there was a link I didn’t find.
What the post is describing sounds exactly like the post getting flagged by users, then uncensored by the mod team later on.
I’m both an HN user of more than a decade, AND a massive HN hater. I’m predisposed to assume the worst, but there’s very little meat to this allegation.
very_well_lost@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Ah, maybe that’s true. I confess I stopped hanging around HN years ago so I don’t really know how ‘flagging’ works and how much influence users have over post visibility. I thought the OP made it clear that something ‘inorganic’ was going on, but I guess that could be user reports just as easily as it could be moderator action.
Either way, it’s still true that getting your tech news from Silicon Valley’s most darling tech incubator is a dumb idea.
TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub 5 days ago
Any alternative you could suggest? I migrated to HN from SlashDot many years ago, because the discussion was mature, and shitposting/jokes were frowned upon.
To this day I haven’t found something similar.
dgdft@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Lobste.rs might be up your alley.
TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub 5 days ago
Heck no. Last time I tried to make an account, someone had to invite you, or you had to prove yourself to them by showing your GitHub as if it was your CV.
Lurking is free, so I went to check what these pro hackers were posting and commenting: many links were already in HN, and the quality of comments was similar. No loss there.