Despite having been near the top of the homepage mere minutes ago, this news article is now seemingly entirely delisted from HN without being marked flagged...
[It has since been marked flagged. My comment was seemingly changed by someone to "and marked flagged", I've changed it back for posterity]
I went back through five pages of posts.
I understand the desire to keep politics out of HN but this seems like a big story to cover up.
Unfortunately any political thread gets a lot of attention from people with ulterior motives to "steer" the thread. It almost never feels organic or authentic, just a lot of astroturf pushing a particular viewpoint.
I don't want to have to dig through folks' comment histories to try to determine if they're actually being truthful or engaged. So I'd rather the political stuff stays on reddit and x.
Flags affect a post's ranking before the [flagged] marker appears. The [flagged] marker indicates that there are a large number of flags relative to upvotes.
Can you please comment on donatj's claim that his post was edited by someone else? Can you or anyone else do this, and did that happen in this case? Does this happen often?
For what it's worth, it's possible I somehow typo'd it. I was on mobile, still in bed and using swype to type... But it smelled very suspicious at the time
The only person who edited https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40052403 was donatj. Does that answer your question?
We don't edit other people's comments, except perhaps if the whitespace is messed up or something like that. I make up for it by obsessively editing my own though.
I see. Thanks.
I appreciated this one making the front page because I encountered the original article on HN and wondered if there’d be retaliation. I like having the follow-up, shame it was more than we could handle I guess.
>... this news article is now seemingly entirely delisted from HN without being marked flagged...
>I went back through five pages of posts.
It's currently on the first page, post #16. Methinks there has been a rush to judgement.
No, it was flagged for hours until recently.
I see it differently. I see inauthentic users boosting these stories so people lose trust in the press.
That ship has long since sailed.