This post had incredible momentum and was rapidly approaching #1, but was suddenly erased:<p>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12328142<p>https://muchweb.me/systemd-nsa-attempt<p>Does this story violate content policy in any way?<p>Snowden's documents suggested that significant resources are being spent to manipulate online discourse.<p>Nevertheless, we must discuss and avert security issues to protect ourselves and our customers, while our government is actively subverting our security.
"Censorship" is like "terrorism", a pejorative that's relative to what people like. So if you like a post and it gets flagged, you can use "censorship" to express not liking that it got flagged.<p>When users flag a story, that's the community immune system rejecting it. It might be hard or annoying to see why users would reject something you posted, but in this case it's fairly easy to explain: it was dramatic without being substantive (and combined several flamewar topics to boot). Such stories mostly don't do well here. That's a good thing.<p>Please, though, don't add meta-drama posts on top of drama posts. At that point you're just adding noise, and we're trying to prop the signal/noise ratio up here.
I'm guessing it was flagged because there was nothing of substance in the article. The author provided no evidence that systemd is malware or that the NSA was involved in its writing. So it's just idle speculation with a click-bait title. If I would have seen the article, I would have flagged it for those reasons.<p>Also, the "[flagged]" prefix indicates that it was killed by user flags, and several users would have had to flag a 19-point article to kill it. I'd hardly call that "censorship" (unless you think that multiple HN users are acting on behalf of the government).<p>Finally, the HN Guidelines say that if you have questions about moderation, you should e-mail the moderators rather than posting. So don't be surprised if this post also gets flagged.
Flagging is done by the HN community as a kind of self-policing. Some of us are more aware of and sensitive to the guidelines[0] (and more likely to enforce them) than others. So a post can be popular, but also violate guidelines blatantly enough that folks flag it. I think your question gets more interesting if a submission violates guidelines, but the readers who choose to flag it are actually the ones also opposed to the content on its own merits, and use their flagging rights to jettison the post.<p>I've seen the same situation where posts get several up-votes shortly after posting and land on the front page before disappearing suddenly. It made me curious whether up-votes can override flags in some ratio, or, whether there is a fixed trigger count that drives [flagged], or, if flagging simply gets the attention of moderators who make the call whether to [flagged] a post or not.<p>[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a>
Also, I'm a bit put off that OP changed the 'Ask HN:' question after I'd commented. Formatting and spelling is fine, but the question changed significantly from (when I commented):<p>===<p>This post was briefly on the front page in the past hour, but was suddenly erased:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12328142" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12328142</a><p>Does this story violate content policy? Or do the ideas threaten the military-industrial complex?<p>===<p>To:<p>===<p>This post had incredible momentum and was rapidly approaching #1, but was suddenly erased:
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12328142" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12328142</a><p><a href="https://muchweb.me/systemd-nsa-attempt" rel="nofollow">https://muchweb.me/systemd-nsa-attempt</a><p>Does this story violate content policy in any way?<p>Snowden's documents suggested that significant resources are being spent to manipulate online discourse.<p>Nevertheless, we must discuss and avert security issues to protect ourselves and our customers, while our government is actively subverting our security.<p>===<p>HN courtesy dictates that after the fact modifications be indicated with 'EDIT:' or some such wording.
Too late, this article is flagged to.<p>Thank goodness for <a href="http://hckrnews.com/" rel="nofollow">http://hckrnews.com/</a>
Happens all the time. It only takes a handful of people to flag something early for it to get blown down the rankings and effectively consigned to oblivion. Some of the more interesting and technology-focused stories do appear to rub some cohort the wrong way and disappear rapidly.<p>You could get tin-foil-hatty, and think that the NSA or CIA has a handful of interns that are paid to watch reddit and hn and influence opinion. But it's probably just as likely that there are enough civilians whose livelihoods depend on inconvenient discussions not occurring.