246 points | by palata1 天前
(mirror: https://files.catbox.moe/icky5m.mp4 )
It's as much "Roman Salute" as Julius Caesar used to eat lettuce with croutons for a meal.
That's nearly always the case when you see [flagged] on a submission, btw. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.
(It's a bit more complex with comments, but also the majority of [flagged] comments are flagged by users, not mods.)
It seems entirely disingenuous to come into this thread and pretend you are entirely separated from the flagging of this post when you are actively supporting it!
That's not to say that the HN discussion went well, but we can't control that. We can only play the odds, and it's important to.
You guys are talking about this (both the stimulus and the response) as if it's some unusual phenomenon. It's not—it's the most standard aspect of HN moderation. If we didn't moderate this way, HN would be a completely different site; the front page would be filled with the latest outrages. To see that, all you have to do is multiply the present situation by a sufficiently large number.
It always feels as if the latest high-energy stimulus as the important one, the indispensable one, the one where things will fall apart if we don't stop everything and argue about it right now. HN is about trying to disengage ourselves from that brain-chemistry ratwheel. I realize that energy is running higher than usual because of the events of yesterday, but again, that's the sort of dynamic this site is about not being determined by—irrespective of political position or feelings about celebrities.
In past threads I've described this as the difference between reflexive and reflective discussion. If anyone wants to understand the basic approach, maybe some of that would help: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....
Good that we have this comment, and history has been written (as some users pointed out).
I hope a lot of you, audience of HN get in touch with the famous poem "First they came" and connect the dots.
It's not possible to run a site like HN without moderation. However, if you delete moderated posts outright, users will rightly complain about censorship. I'm not referring to the politics of the last 10 years when I use that word; I'm talking about 2006 or so, when pg was first designing HN. The solution he came up with, which has held up well over the years, is not to delete moderated posts, but rather to tag them as "[dead]" in a way that anyone who wants to read them is welcome to.
So what you call "hiding the news from people without an account", I call "not deleting anything and making sure that anyone who wants to can read the complete set of moderated posts".
This is in the FAQ (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html) and there's lots of past explanation at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
This is a forum site for discussion between people that have accounts.
Given the technical background of the forum demographic having an account that's either largely anonymous or directly tied to a real identity is no great drama.
There was absolutely nothing for millions of people to believe Elon had either nazi ideology or saw Nazi mannerisms as a valid populist angle before yesterday, I myself found this development very enlightening - and this is where I first found it.
As for the rest of your comment; ironically, I think flagging this as early as it was (I was there) was more reflexive than any comment you'd find in this thread. I understand where you’re coming from because moderation is crucial when discussions go off the rails. But there’s room for thoughtful conversation here, beyond the hot takes. Some comments will be reflexive or partisan, but letting the discussion happen (with supervision) can surface more reflective points, too. Shutting it down early misses those insights - in fact, it's caused more negatively reflective points on the trend of moderation here.
One point that might be worth adding (or maybe not, but here it is): when you say "moderation is crucial" and "letting the discussion happen (with supervision)", I feel like you're overestimating the capacity of moderation. It is a scarce resource in several ways, some obvious some not. Part of this is about trying to invest it wisely.
For example, I put huge effort into moderating the thread about pg's "origins of wokeness" essay (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42682305) and ended up, at the end of a long day, feeling like I had hardly made a dent. (The current case would certainly be worse.) So when you argue for letting a particularly flame-prone thread burn and posit that it can be turned into a thoughtful conversation by sufficiently effective moderation, my sense is "I don't think that's realistic".
Anyhow, that's a secondary consideration, but it is consistent with the primary considerations.
(Btw I had deleted the first paragraph of my comment because I felt it was cuttable, but since you quoted it, I've put it back.)
Anyway, I know moderation is difficult, but I want to gently suggest that this feels like a double standard.
On the other hand, a thoughtful pg essay and a sensational 3-second video clip of the most trollicious person on the internet are pretty different on (let's call it) the genre spectrum, and that's an important consideration for HN moderation too.
As inconsistent and arbitrary as individual moderation calls may feel or be, though, the principles of HN moderation have been surprisingly consistent over the years, and that's the more important level. We don't always apply them correctly or consistently, but I think the principles themselves are good ones for this site and are easily defensible. Most of what I do in moderation comments like this is try to explain those principles, though usually the commenters are concerned about one particular story, at least in the moment.
All I ask is consistency.
I'm going to do my job the same way as always. History will come to its own conclusions.
This sort of flare-up always feels absolutely critical in the moment—how can one possibly justify not dropping everything to orbit around it?—and then vanishes. Their half life is so brief that I'm surprised people don't notice how ephemeral they are. They come in an endless sequence, and they aren't what HN is supposed to be for. They're also not that hard to resist; it's not as if this is a borderline call.
I know it's how Trump and Elon work: they make outrage after outrage, crime after crime, so that one shadows the other, we can't keep track, we get exhausted, etc.
But there has to be a tipping point, or we just boil like frogs in the fascism saucepan.
If this is not the tipping point, what will it be? A proud, intense, in-your-face nazi salute, the day of the inauguration. If your tipping point is when they finally come after you, you'll be all alone. It's textbook 1930s Germany.
You seem to be saying there will be no tipping point for you. People wonder how the darkest moments of history happened, and how people let it happen.
This is how.
I expect even more censorship on this site for the next few years (especially criticism) as even the mods and higher ups are kneeling down on this administration just a few hours into it.
Not a good look.
Written by a former nazi paperclip scientist
That's decades after he was born.
Any explanation for that or are you claiming Jungian levels of synchronicity?
You would have known that your statement is not fact had you read the article you linked, especially the section about the claim:
> Interest in this novel increased in 2021 when people connected Elon, the Martian leader, to SpaceX founder, Elon Musk, suggesting that von Braun may have predicted Musk's space exploration ventures.
"the future of civilization is assured".
Which feels like a call out to the great replacement theory.
You know the famously anti-Semitic white nationalist one he publicly agreed with on Twitter just about a year ago and had to go on an apology tour to Auschwitz as a result and claimed he was naive about anti-Semitism.
But, if you're not interested in the whole genocide thing, it also seems relevant that he was on stage welcoming a new US Administration that is actively working against his main business's stated mission:
> Tesla's mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy. To achieve our mission, we're building a world powered by solar, enabled by battery storage and transported by electric vehicles (EV).
I expect even more censorship on this site for the next few years (especially criticism) as even the mods and higher ups are kneeling down on this administration just a few hours into it.
It has to be all or nothing. There is no apolitical discussion of modern technology, and this Trump/Musk ticket is going to show everything that's wrong with embracing such a fickle guideline. The worst part is, it's only going to contribute to HN's decline in civil digression and make perfectly intelligent people question why they use this site in the first place. We need this sort of discussion, otherwise people become complacent and tone-deaf like Elon.
No substance?!
This is not some 'they caught a single frame where it looks like something it isn't' rage bait.
The video is extremely clear.
As for the nukes, pretty much exactly what the Nazis would have done if they had gotten some.
As an aside, this YT channel has the best series I've seen on WW2. They go through the war, week by week, telling all that happened that week. There are several mini-series like Crimes Against Humanity and Spies and Ties. The production quality is really good too
https://www.youtube.com/@WorldWarTwo
They are doing one on the Korean War right now
Truly, Donald Trump could decide tomorrow to refuse audience with Zelenskyy and only meet with Putin. Russia's treasury would be hemorrhaging within a week and the government would be paralyzed in the middle of an active invasion. That would be dangerous for America and NATO allies, but what does that concern a non-member like Ukraine after all?
Russia has spent 30 years on life support. America and Ukraine simply disagree on how we pull the plug.
Someone posts Paul Graham's post talking about "woke" ideology and mods/admins do nothing about it
While this one stays flagged
At least be consistent
Most of the users that can [flag] also have the option to [vouch]. If enough vouch the flag is reveresed (as far as I know).
Note that the same thing is true for comments. Occasionally, but not often, you'll find a [flagged] comment that isn't [dead], you can't vouch for those either. Only once they become [dead] can they be vouched for.
Addendum1: I haven't compiled a detailed cross referenced list of observations about HN .. but it's got a lot of little subtle quirks from custom coding .. I suspect there's a window for submission vouching that's only open to users with certain other privlege escalations, or perhaps a stochastic element throws that chance to a random few .. eg: I have no option to vouch for this flagged submission, but I have had that option on others.
Addendum2: Jtsummers may well be right. There may also still be other odd little factors <shrug>.
Okay. He does comment most days.
> He is upholding the flag, ..
Is he? Like "actively" .. or just letting things work as they are designed and as HN users have made happen?
> which makes him complicit.
Does it?
If so, is there a legal path by which we can punish him for this?
Maybe you've invested a little to much of yourself in an online forum.
Musk and PG are both heroes in the startup / tech / VC world.
For better or worse, it's hardly surprising that this forum is very supportive of them.
More like the Kardashians of the startup/tech/VC World. Fake gaming creds, claiming to work 80hrs/week while having 60hrs of tweets.
is hn also doing the seig heil?
At first I figured the video would show him making some vague imitation people were overreacting to but no, full on mind blowing salute.
[0] https://newrepublic.com/post/190464/did-elon-musk-nazi-salut...
“It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured,” Musk said.
Similar past use by Hitler.
“Only the Aryan can secure the future of civilization through his creative and organizing power.”
https://efiretemple.com/analyzing-adolf-hitlers-use-of-the-t...
can't discuss shit on HN
Unlike, say, reddit, which has a bunch of subreddits for various topics, hacker news only has one feed. So it is naturally more restrictive about topic.
I can see how reasonable folks can see this post as sort of grey area, but at the end of the day, the users of hacker news flagged this post, the moderator -- who I've historically found to do a fantastic and neutral job of monitoring -- believes it does not meet HN guidelines, so I think this just isn't the platform to discuss this news. And that doesn't seem unreasonable, either. I'm sure there are other places to discuss it online.
Not a good look at all.
"The Roman salute, also known as the Fascist salute, is a gesture in which the right arm is fully extended, facing forward, with palm down and fingers touching. In some versions, the arm is raised upward at an angle; in others, it is held out parallel to the ground. In contemporary times, the former is commonly considered a symbol of fascism that had been based on a custom popularly attributed to ancient Rome.[1] However, no Roman text gives this description, and the Roman works of art that display salutational gestures bear little resemblance to the modern so-called "Roman" salute."
Once you've learned to count backwards to zero
"In German, und Englisch, I know how to count down
Und I'm learning Chinese!" says Wernher von Braun
Either he is the most ignorant, idiot who bought himself an election through his own propaganda platform and that was a 'normal' TX.
Or he had a very fucked up mental moment doing a Nazi salute.
Feel free to choose what you prefer though
