Buzzfeed stories are normally penalized, but we take the penalty off for major stories. We've done that here. HN tends to frown on media controversy, but since this story seems destined to be above the line in any case, it may as well be the original source. We've demoted the other posts on the same story as duplicates.
To say that this is "media controversy" borders on the absurd: this is entirely inappropriate and indefensible behavior from a top executive at a top company -- and it raises all sorts of legitimate questions about corporate culture and how companies internalize public criticism. You use the passive voice when you say that "it seems destined to be above the line" when in fact it is above the line because many in the HN demographic feel that this story is important. In this case, HN's strange paternalism is going to cause this discussion to happen three separate times in three separate threads. Can the HN community really not be trusted to decide what we think is important?
I'm a bit confused, because this comment mostly seems in vigorous agreement with what we actually did. We restored the story to the front page, where it still is. But let me try to address your concerns as I understand them.
The posts were obvious duplicates, so we did the routine thing and demoted all but one of them. It's true that we didn't merge the threads (which we've recently begun doing in many such cases), but IIRC that's because most of the discussion in the other threads at that point was about why they weren't the Buzzfeed story. Did I get that wrong? If so, it was for the mundane reason that at 1 A.M. I was tired and less meticulous than I try to be.
By "seems destined, etc." I meant that many people here obviously cared about the story. "Media controversy" doesn't strike me as absurd at all, but let's not quarrel over wording; let's seek each other's meaning instead.
FWIW, my personal opinion is that, assuming the story is accurately reported, it's outrageous. But it's our duty to try to factor personal opinions out of moderation decisions.
You seem to be complaining that HN's front page isn't decided by votes alone. It never has been; it has always been a blend of voting and curation. Voting alone would cause HN to be dominated by outrage, gossip, fashion and promotion. That would kill the site. [1]
I dislike that fact as much as any HN user, and probably have more reason to dislike it. But there's no question that it's true. It's so true that it's an interesting question why it's true, given that this is a community of smart people, and I even have a whole theory about it... but I'll spare you.
1. I'm just echoing what tptacek already said in this thread, as well as regurgitating what I've posted dozens of times, but it does seem necessary to regurgitate.
The entire point of clickbait sensationalist journalism is to get people fighting about non-issues. A guy who landed a probe on a fucking comet was forced to apologize in tears because he wore a shirt that these same people disliked. Now even the MSM is pointing out how ridiculous that was. He was called sexist, exemplifying why women don't work in STEM. They just found evidence of organic matter on the comet. This is groundbreaking. But the fucking shirt. Scientific achievements don't generate the clicks and outrage like sensationalist "fuck ethics" journalism.
Let's make HN about sensationalist articles about shirts and off-hand jokes at private dinners.
Why not just unmod all of the websites that do this routinely. This is hardly as big as half of their "stories", and then let the front page be covered with stories that sit there for 2 days because they have 3000+ upvotes?
This place has become a more toxic version of Reddit. Oddly, this story isn't on the front page there, or even on the front of /r/programming. Or even in the first 4 pages. I guess they're doing something better.
How about we take it a step further and ban positive mention of Uber, since it seems the majority here hates Uber for one reason or another, even if they're mostly uninformed (and yes, quoting BuzzFeed or PandoDaily as fact makes one uninformed) or do so because someone poked their feelings. Maybe next we can ban gendered pronouns and require people disclose their full names, place of employment, and home address, because anonymity is the cause of online toxicity. We definitely need to lower the downvote bar to 0 so that new people can immediately begin downvoting anyone they don't like or disagree with. Let's see how deep this rabbit hole goes.
You obviously care about the quality of HN, as do I, as does the GP. What makes this a hard problem is that the community doesn't agree on what constitutes quality.
Serious discussion about how to manage HN needs to begin with the insight that many people here disagree with one, and most are participating in as much good faith as oneself. If you don't take that in, you're not grappling with the real problem. (I don't mean you personally, of course, but all of us.) In that case it inevitably feels like there are obvious solutions which for dark reasons we're refusing to implement. In reality, it's just a lot harder than that. That's incredibly frustrating, but we can't get anywhere by ignoring it.
> In this case, HN's strange paternalism is going to cause this discussion to happen three separate times in three separate threads. Can the HN community really not be trusted to decide what we think is important?
If you're interpreting mods' behavior in maintaining this site as paternalism and think a set of randos voting on articles that attract their attention is an entity to which the verb "trusted" could even be applied, you are completely out of touch with reality.
It's disrespectful that the community cannot allowed to at least see the stories we want to see bubble to the top, good or bad. There are good lessons to be learned in all of these issues, moreso than a lot of articles that bubble up to the top here.
Ehh, I can see where dang is coming from - some moderation is needed in order for the community not to descend to Reddit levels of intelligibility.
That said, I do agree that painting this as a "media controversy" is grossly off the mark. This isn't your usual (somewhat entertaining) mud slinging between trashy bloggers, this addresses real misbehavior by a real tech company.
Imagine if Glenn Greewald and Snowden were treated as merely "media controversies".
The Asshole Problem(tm) is becoming a huge, gigantic, glaring issue that will only get bigger. The deafening silence from our industry whenever deplorable behavior like this surfaces is itself worth addressing. This especially includes the usual deafening silence from investors (including YC) whenever their companies are caught doing something overtly evil.
HN has always been moderated at the post level, from the beginnings of the site. If it wasn't, the site would be flooded with fluffy recaps of whatever current event story was making people angriest right now, and there would be no place for stories about Linux on solderless breadboards and Latex-like math programming languages; instead, we'd get HuffPo, Buzzfeed, Pando, and ValleyWag's take on whatever the controversy-du-jour was, day after day.
So there's no place for reasoned discussion on topics that are clearly of interest to many here? That sounds like a poor excuse for improper moderation. Some level of post level moderation I can understand, but to the degree practiced here, you might as well have sanctioned curators instead of moderators for that - at the least, it'd be far more accurate, and far more transparent.
Instead we get a heavyhanded version that allows a few to destroy possible reasoned discussion by squelching it as a side-effect of this rationale, and instead we get lots of topics that don't really foster discussion, are often not interesting or important (even to those intellectually minded) - there are plenty of banal articles on startups that get upvoted and end up on the front page, but no similar policy gets instituted simply because they are "not controversial", and yet they take up the same space, and certainly are less fulfilling. The process is opaque, and I know I'm not the only one here who has questioned this.
There are sometimes situations where flags are deemed inappropriate, and yet the effects don't get raised when moderators even acknowledge when the flags were incorrect.
I guess my point was, a cri de coeur at the end of 2014 probably isn't going to change a policy that has been in place since early 2007. You are effectively arguing with the premise of the site.
It's a valid point, but there are plenty of fluffy stories about HN's favourite companies (which have included Uber in the past); how many stories about Tesla (the company), Uber, and the like are about their technology, and how many are breathless enthusiasm?
It does look a little rank when there's been heaps of "rah-rah Uber, disrupt, disrupt, disrupt" type articles in the past to have negative ones pruned.
If it looks that way, you should question your assumptions, because that's not what's happening. What's instead happening is that a controversy-du-jour is spawning lots of little stories, and the mods are working to make sure they don't co-opt the front page, which (because it is a linear list of individual links) is especially vulnerable to controversies-du-jour.
This isn't a major story. It's an out-of-context clickbait dressed recount of a hypothetical story painted by a frustrated man at a private dinner.
If there was a criminal suit filed along side the allegations made, perhaps you'd have a major story. This is just another in a long line of hit pieces that seem to have no basis in reality.
I'll respectfully disagree. There's nothing "hypothetical" about it, the guy laid out a budget and a game plan for targeted harassment and intimidation of journalists who dared to write negative press. There were multiple high-profile witnesses, and after it all came to light, he called and then emailed the journalist he threatened, to apologize profusely.
This is just one more event in a long history of Uber being an extremely bad actor. They use dirty tactics to try to run their competitors out of business instead of competing on their merits, they treat their drivers and riders like shit, they gleefully flaunt their ability to track anyone, anywhere, any time and use it against them. Now they've gone on record (his emailed apology puts the entire affair on the record, no matter what he thought during the dinner in question) admitting that they are willing to harass, intimidate, and even threaten the lives of journalists and their families.
In short, this company is ran by a bunch of sociopaths who think they can do no wrong. It's going to bite them in the ass, and I hope sooner than later.
There's nothing in this article alleging that. There is someone in the comments here who has been vehemently anti-Uber on other social media who makes the claim, though.
Let's get facts before we throw around slanderous accusations. Or even apply some basic reasoning.
