hipadev23

Very well then. I’m going to create a better product to accelerate that gravitational collapse.

See some of you on the other side but it won’t be here. I’m out.

Votes are a far bigger problem than flagging because it takes a pavlovian approach to what ideas are allowed. Flagging is important to remove spam and wholly inappropriate content. And if you revoke the ability of users who flag content based on a personal disagreement, that user simply loses that ability.

Then we remove upvotes and downvote entirely. Web2.0 online discourse (visibility is controlled by recommendation algos keyed on upvotes/downvotes) is fundamentally broken.

Make it public. Upvotes/downvotes/flagging should have usernames attached to it.

It 100% absolutely is, you're just too deep to recognize it.

It's what's happened across Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook over the past decade. You've all built platforms intended for social discourse but instead built extremely brittle systems subject to gamified manipulation by showing people which opinions reward and punish them. And those are then manipulated at-large by outside groups responsible for elevating a particular way of thinking about a given topic.

Conversations do not need a algorithmic popularity mechanism.

I think you need to admit HN is failing due to how easy it is to manipulate what content and comments are shown. Allows a single determined group to literally control the narrative. Eliminate upvotes/downvotes. Keep flagging but make it public record. And revoke privileges for those who abuse it.

> > I feel like HN is decidedly less awful than most other discussion boards

I agree, but that's unfortunately a very low bar these days.

If we got rid of upvotes/downvotes (keep flagging privileges, but make it public record, and abuse-it-you-lose-it) the variety of thought and ideas on HN would 100x overnight.

Yes.

No, it doesn't.

>ultimately your job is to serve whichever politician is in power

No they don't? They a take an oath to the constitution. "I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic"

The president is temporary. The constitution endures.

[flagged]

Agreed. But that's why I said nazi bar. It doesn't mean everyone.

Also due to the upvote/downvote/flag system, entire narratives are controlled with a small number of accounts. It's a fundamentally broken approach to online discussions. We need to get rid of upvote/downvotes completely. Retain flagging for vetted users, and punish those who are flagging material that should not be flagged.

This is headline news stuff for the past two weeks. Nobody needs to cite it.