Dang and other editors manually tweak things regularly to make sure stuff like this is not on the front page and consider that to be a feature not a bug and are not at all interested in listening to any criticism that maybe that’s not the right move in 2025.
This story spent 18 hours on the front page seven days ago, and attracted over 1100 upvotes and over 600 comments. It also attracted dozens of community flags, but we turned off the flags in order to give the story full visibility.
I've noticed that a lot of the articles describing various Trump admin abuses (be it DOGE, or Trump crypto scams, or whatever) get flagged a lot. (While they're very relevant, nobody can tell me SBF crypto drama scams are relevant to HN, but Trump crypto scams are not). It's concerning that there are people on HN who prefer to silence such discussions...
Are you really telling me with a straight face that there isn’t manual intervention every day to deemphasise political content? Like we are all watching it happen in real time. Every day the gap between what people are ACTUALLY voting for that’s only available on a hidden page (https://news.ycombinator.com/active) not linked to from anywhere on the website as far as I can tell and what is presented as the most popular content is considerable.
We don't manually intervene to deemphasise content just because it's political, and indeed we often manually intervene to restore political stories to the front page when they have been automatically downweighted due to flags or flamewars.
We moderate to optimize for intellectual curiosity, nothing more.
It’s an awfully convenient bit of wording where nobody can pin you down on exactly what that means but only on what actions get taken.
It’s what I’m referring to when I say that I’ve never once seen a moderator once consider their own judgement when presented with feedback. It’s always the same line. Things are running exactly as intended from your point of view it would seem.
I mean not to be difficult: just to try and understand exactly what your claim is.
If you have an example of a moderation action that you disagreed with (E.g., a particular story about DOGE or the administration that wasn't adequately discussed on HN), please share a link or something else concrete and we'll explain it or investigate it. You can post it here or email us (we have had email threads going back years with users who want to share feedback and learn about how we think about these things [1]).
If you have concerns about any future stories being hidden, you could set up your own API listener, monitor for new stories and then see which ones are flagged or killed.
For the record, I routinely undertake practices for evaluating and improving my own judgement, and am happy to do so regarding any specific case. But you haven't provided me with any specific feedback to respond to.
At the peak period of DOGE activity when it was the biggest political news story, I never once saw stories about it on the front page here. Someone relying on HN as their primary news aggregator would be entirely clueless to what was going on in Washington. I actually tried searching for them at last, because it seemed implausible to me that nothing was being posted and gaining traction and it was only then that I realized that there were tonnes of stories, but they were being flagged and buried.
I don't necessarily know that it's moderator malfeascence so much as people abusing HN tools to bury stories that they don't like, but I do think that there should be some consideration about how those tools are being abused and how that abuse can be effectively countered.
I get the impression that an effort is being made to correct the situation, but I've given up on the front page and only visit /active now, so I might be completely wrong.
Guys, I want to investigate this claim, but people keep making it without giving me any details to look into. If you give us a specific news item or date range, we can look at the data and see what was happening (we have access to internal and external tools that show where each story was ranked at different times).
Also: any time you know of an important story that you think should be on the front page, you can email us to let us know - hn@ycombinator.com. We'll either address it or explain why we're doing something other than what you're asking for.
> Someone relying on HN as their primary news aggregator
Who are these people who look only at HN and nothing else, expecting to be fully informed about everything that's important in the world? :)
Because today’s post is a repeat/dupe of the same story that was on the front page for 18 hours a week ago and attracted 1100 upvotes and 600+ comments. It was one of the biggest stories all year on HN:
What is even the logic here? I understand the concept that when you have multiple threads going on about one article or story AT THE SAME TIME… then sure, the dupe option makes sense.
When you are manually putting a dupe tag on a story because someone posted it a week ago I think people feel very differently about that.
This is very literally the kind of behaviour people are referring to when they make the accusation that the mods are actively interfering with what people want to talk about.
This idea that you’re here telling me and others with a straight face that everything is above board while also doing this just doesn’t pass the credibility test, the logic makes no sense.
This is the way HN has always been moderated. Well, for at least 10 years. It's in the FAQ [1]
If a story has not had significant attention in the last year or so, a small number of reposts is ok. Otherwise we bury reposts as duplicates.
It's nothing to do with it being political. It's simply to do with being a duplicate of a story that has already been heavily discussed, just a week ago.
It's a well established convention that a topic is only eligible for further front page exposure when there is "significant new information" (SNI) [2].
There have been many instances of SNI with respect to DOGE this year, which is why there have been (I believe) more front-page stories about it on HN than anything else [3].
The krebs on security detail was published just yesterday. While it's the same event, krebs is an authoritative source which has more detail than the npr source.
The threshold is Significant New Information ("SNI"), where "significant" implies that it's material enough to alter the dimensions of the story. I don't think many people were left uncertain by the NPR story.
The faq says rankings can be affected by automated moderation. I'd appreciate to have this clarified by a mod if one happens to read my words. Thanks
How are stories ranked?
The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in threads are ranked the same way.
Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action.
Possibly because Y now has some of its startups involved with DOGE and other government activities. Keep in mind that much of the techn world’s anarchocapitalism ideology being implemented came from or has been the “though leaders” or their behind this website.
His responses to these particulars are less relevant than his career of pushing ideas that have fueled the anarcho capitalist agenda where the following seems virtuous rather than destructive of equitable law and society:
If you follow the logic of his essays—especially ones like “How to Make Wealth,” “Do Things that Don’t Scale,” or “Hackers and Painters”—you end up in a world where:
• The best people ignore rules that slow them down.
• Regulation is often just cargo-cult bureaucracy.
• Wealth is proof of virtue, or at least utility. Wealth + the rest = do what you want if you think you’re right and can get away with it
• Institutions should get out of the way of smart individuals.
• And the market, not the government, should determine value.
These are interpretations that can be argued and debated (it's not appropriate for me to engage in any such debate here). But there are also major disconnects and deeply hostile disputes between key YC figures and those working with the administration.
The point is, none of it has anything to do with the way we moderate HN – which of the conflicting cues would we follow?
HN has had more front-page-visible, heavily upvoted/discussed stories about DOGE than anything else this year, along with several others relating to the administration, with the overwhelming sentiment in the articles and comments being critical.
Dang has commented at length on the matter several times:
I think dang, or the agglomeration of people who fill that role, are pretty good in respect to this, responsible stewards of the active commenting space. and I’m not proposing conspiracy theories about them not being upfront or honest in what they have said: it’s much simpler than active suppression to simply tweak the automated criteria by which articles are allowed to rise or fall.
While it's true that he has spoken against Trump many times, Garry Tan is very close to Thiel, Musk, and the MAGA movement in general. Didn't he recently show support for DOGE as well?
Of course, YC is more than its current CEO and hopefully this doesn't affect the moderation of this website :)
He's on the board of YC, which appoints the CEO [1], and he still has a lot of influence. He still has dinner with dang from time to time to talk about HN [2].
> While it's true that he has spoken against Trump many times, Garry Tan is very close to Thiel, Musk, and the MAGA movement in general. Didn't he recently show support for DOGE as well?
I don't think that's a completely accurate characterisation. Garry continues to identify as a Democrat [3]. He works with people across the political spectrum to make the playing field fair for the earliest-stage startups, which is consistent with his roles as an early-stage investor and a partner (and now CEO) of YC for over a decade. Just a couple of weeks ago he hosted the Little Tech Competition Summit [4] in DC, featuring speakers from different sides and parts of government. One of the most notable speeches was by Cory Booker, who talked at length about the importance of making entrepreneurship accessible to people of all socioeconomic backgrounds, which is a cause Garry deeply supports, given his own life experience.
> Of course, YC is more than its current CEO and hopefully this doesn't affect the moderation of this website :)
Exactly :)
If we were making moderation decisions to serve individuals or agendas that supposedly our “salary depends on”, we'd tie ourselves in knots.
Our job is to keep HN a great place for intellectual curiosity.
This is quite the curveball, but, sure: this would never happen. The primary guiding principle of HN moderation is that community trust and goodwill is the most precious thing we have, and any action that diminishes it would destroy HN and everything we've worked for. The community scrutinizes everything we do. I can't fathom any such experiment that would be remotely beneficial to HN/YC that would be worth diminishing community trust for. Can you?
There has been some strange submissions and comments lately. Discussions feel out of place.
The expression "intellectual curiosity" grabbed my attention. Whatever is happening is definitely curious from an intellectual point of view, but it feels weird.
The world feels weird to me lately, but nothing you’re seeing is due to any secret experiments or any change in moderation policy.
We’re (always) trying to get better at finding and penalizing bad comments – but not everyone agrees on what constitutes a “bad” comment.
Everyone is welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com if they see any story or comment that seems off, and we’re happy to investigate or explain anything.
Loudly complaining on a closed platform controlled by the unelected darling of the current adminstration is less impressive than he might hope. He has high profile blog that is silent on the current administration but highlights a article critical of "Wokeness".
> Paul Graham (the only "thought leader" behind this website) loudly campaigns against the current U.S. administration almost every day on Twitter
Does he? https://x.com/paulg (maybe moderated by Musk/Twitter) only shows tweets about Gaza suffering which could be construed as criticising the current administration. On the contrary, I see multiple tweets jerking off Elon Musk (part of the current administration) and calling for compassion and personal sacrifice towards people who voted for Trump. Yes, there's "why you should vote for Kamala" tweet, but nothing critical of the current Trump regime. Let alone daily.
Perhaps you're not logged in and are only seeing the highlights from recent months? I see a steady stream of posts criticising the current administration – some of his own and some reposts of others – several in just the past few days.
PG is a tech billionaire and I don't trust any of them more than I can throw them. They'll put on a nice "Don't be evil" face and then smash us under their heels.
Stuff gets flagged as "flamebait" or something similar (forget the exact term) on HN - I think this can be done manually and is also automated, but it can definitely be turned off manually by mods - and it gets sent to the void b/c of risk of starting unwanted conversations.
