Seems like there are few stories or comments around the many tech related issues regarding DEI, investments, company pivots, trade, and geo-political territories. Not that there should be more, but it seems like there is less.
That's not a comprehensive list—there are quite a few others—but whether it's the right amount of not is something each HN user will have a different opinion about.
Not to mention that so many posts that people share got shut down and censored by the mods and admins after users flag it to death.
They don't want to admit it but the truth is that they're all in to the current coup that's happening in Washington right now. That's turning into a fact every single day now.
I'm not the only mod (just the only one who posts publicly) - but even if you put all of us together, we can't monitor everything that gets posted here. We rely on users to bring things to our attention.
Chiming in: flags, and in egregious / urgent cases, email to hn@ycombinator.com.
That email backlog is apparently expanding, ~12--24 hours per dang's recent comments, so both expect and respect that.
For general-purpose abuse, I prefer simply flagging.
To disable flags on an article I'll email mods, that occurs fairly rarely.
If an account seems to be flagrantly violating HN Guidelines, and has had previous warnings (you can use the replies endpoint to find those: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42571073>), I'll drop an email as well.
Thank you for your response. I still believe that this is a great forum because the moderators manage it effectively. I hope you and your team keep enhancing HN.
> Since some people perceive discussion quality to be (relatively) high on HN
It’s really not at the moment on so many discussion worthy topics. I get it, there will be the same old tropes and opinions but HN does a great job of cutting through the noise and unveiling interesting perspectives.
I’m surprised and a little disappointed. And left wondering where to find the discussions on such topics that are worth reading.
There's a limit on how much of that load HN can bear before collapsing. I wrote about this earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42949237. If you read that and have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
Voting, moderation, and flagging are affordances with predictable uses. Even the designers of such systems may find themselves being told the equivalent of "you're holding it wrong" (this occure to me some time back in an earlier life).
I'd generally defer to actual use as well-known reality, rather than unqualified abuse. If that causes problems with platform goals, then the system should build in checks on such impacts, as HN has.
There's been a ton of news about the cross between tech billionaires and politics that all have repurcussions for the economy and industry but not only do they none not end up on the front page they're flagged to death.
Hn loves discussing airplanes, but nothing about elons wreckless approach to the faa going forward can be discussed because users are flagging?
Point remains that the best way to resolve this isn't snark or whinging on threads, but emails to mods. They (dang and others) are well aware of this limitation and have occasionally expressed frustrations. Member-based moderation works relatively well, for much discussion, but does have some profound limitations. Acknowledge and work with those.
I don't think I'm whining or being snarky. I made one comment based on observations and shared my worthless opinion.
I don't expect to resolve it, I'm just a passer by, it's not my website. I'm fammilar with the mostly hands off approach the mods want to take towards topics here.
Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
(Flagging here is effectively a type of voting behaviour.)
As to issues with HN's collaborative filtering (voting, flagging, vouching) features, dang's addressed that:
Sure there's abuse of the flagging system; there's abuse of everything. But HN's system as a whole (consisting of community, moderators, and software) has countervailing mechanisms for that and other abuses....
I would say (despite my own personal engagement) that its about the right amount.
I say despite.. because I judge engagement as a net negative much of the time: I prefer to read HN than write into it, and when I write, I judge myself harshly. I'm writing too much into the politics discussions.
They're not off topic if they are 'evidence of some interesting new phenomenon'. As a long-time HN user you are surely as aware of that caveat as I am.
Politics has always made up a large part of HN discourse. You can verify this by hitting the firebase API, or just use the search field at the bottom of the page and look into some past discussions around terms like 'Iraq' or 'guantanamo'.
Tech and Tech bros' politics are dominating the headlines. It's highly relevant since whatever happens will dictate a big part of tech's future. Deciding what programming language to use can't be the only HN subject at this point.
Officially: no politics. That rule is not always enforced.
Likely: the owners of ycombinator and hackernews have very specific views and connections to people in the tech industry with very specific views. Tech Bros are taking over, and ycombinator is squarely in the tech-bro camp -- that's the point of the site!
I think Elon Musk is funny as hell. Snake oil salesmen attract each other. I am apolitical btw. It's just funny to me how people buy into politics tribes as meaningful when the reality is just groups of primates jockeying for power the same as for the last several million years, except now some blow hards have twitter.
Everyone dies. What I find amusing is the concern of privileged Westerns who have probably seldom had to do a day of physical labor in their lives who think they can save the world from nature with their expertise and hope to profit and gain social status and better mating opportunities by doing so. It is nothing different from what primates Musk and Trump are doing. It is just playing a different game with the same goal. People want to influence the world, do good, so other people will give them higher status. Every single one of my human ancestors died. Most of them lived a more natural life than the livestock and zoo exhibits we see on the Earth planet today.
All tech is vanity. If you want to survive the coming collapse learn to live as wild humans. Become hard. Make a living from the land as your ancestors did. Learn how to solve real problems. The future is dark. Only the smart and the strong will survive. Theories don't matter. What matters is what works in nature. We may not live to see the collapse but it is coming. The easy resources of the world are being exhausted. There are no replacements that are not more expensive to save us. Technology will not save us because we are constrained by the laws of physics and limited resources on this single planet. Primate humans will not leave the earth planet because no habitable other world lies within traversing distance. The only way for the species to survive is to downsize and return to it's ancestral habits and find a religion that is life supporting and hope a true space faring species does not find our world and harvest it for it's meat before we can become quieter and less noticable to the hunters. Even then there is hope if we are the product of alien bioengineering in primates that we will be saved by our shepherd species. It is also more probable that we are alone in the universe or the local group. Time will tell. However with agglomeration of billions of tweeting, soft, delusional, meat bearing creatures I fear our world is ripe for harvest by a race of space faring carnivores if it is within traversable space from wherever they may be coming. Maybe they have wormhole technology. We should be humbler, keep the secrets of time secret and love our families and downsize and be smaller and less noticable like our early mammal forebears.
The meek shall inherit the earth and who knows what shall emerge from the bottomless pit.
We know less than we believe. We should act more than strive to know.
Live a humble, simple life, loving your family and particular social band in accordance with the Georgia Guidance whose monument was unfortunately blown up in accordance with the delusional zeitgeist that humans cause human problems and humans can solve human problems. Humans are a product of nature and subject to nature. Nothing more, nothing less. Even if there was an engineering project to create a more intelligent ape, it's still an ape. Don't forget. Your destiny, Adam, is not in the stars but on the planet Earth.
20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42950790 - Feb 2025 (456 comments)
The FAA’s Hiring Scandal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42944203 - Feb 2025 (537 comments)
What's happening inside the NIH and NSF - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42940257 - Feb 2025 (1422 comments)
GitHub reveals how software engineers are purging federal databases - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42936940 - Feb 2025 (308 comments)
Payments crisis of 2025: Not “read only” access anymore - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42933219 - Feb 2025 (634 comments)
The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42910910 - Feb 2025 (2901 comments)
CDC: Unpublished manuscripts mentioning certain topics must be pulled or revised - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42905937 - Feb 2025 (714 comments)
NSF starts vetting all grants to comply with executive orders - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42886661 - Jan 2025 (485 comments)
That's not a comprehensive list—there are quite a few others—but whether it's the right amount of not is something each HN user will have a different opinion about.