You know this same story has been posted on this place for at least 2 years? Every time (since the first couple at least) it gets flagged, called a dupe, and people in the comments wring their hands about WHY that is.
What's the interesting conversation that's supposed to emerge from this? "I believe her." "I don't." is about the limit. There's no new info other than a suit being filed, there's a ton of heat, but almost no light.
So people flag it, then other people act like there's a conspiracy to flag it.
It's important to have a discussion about one of the most powerful people in tech behaving in a completely immoral fashion. Is it safe to use OpenAI, I think not. This site has a vested interest in squashing that very important discussion, so we're not allowed to have it here.
You might not want to believe that other people don't see things the way you do, and you might prefer to believe that 'the site' is disagreeing with you instead. I'd just ask... what's the "conversation" that needs to happen? Why would this change the "safety" of using OpenAI?
How is intellectual curiosity satisfied by a page of people who don't know the truth of the matter, speculating about what-if's that we can't possibly resolve with the information we have? That's tabloid talk, and as far as OpenAI goes that company is a whole lot more than Sam Altman.
Examples of why this is important: Will asking OpenAI about this topic yield biased results? How about other topics? Would you trust OpenAI to not spy on your prompts? Are they selling your data? Leadership morals matter.
It does look like awful lot of gaslighting to paint her as mentally ill. some quick web search showed she is the black sheep of the family. and she seem to exhibit behaviors r-pe victims commonly do like using sexuality to empower themselves (having an active onl-fans account) and such.
Just like in Lavinia Woodward's case. Success sometimes gives you this kind of privilege to bypass justice. The dupe thread seems to have been flagged and this thread might be flagged as well. Not hard to see what is going on tbh.
I skimmed HN's FAQ and I see no mention of forbidden topics or words and it seems the mod team prides itself on openness (does not make it true, i know). Do you believe your comment or your account would face negative consequences for using that word?
There's no problem with plain language about rape or other topics on HN. Plain language is preferable.
The issue here is not whether people are allowed to use specific words, it's whether the story gratifies intellectual curiosity, as the site guidelines require for a story to be on topic (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). The community verdict, arrived at via the standard tug-of-war between upvotes and flags, is that it does not. Some users are unhappy with that and are seeing it not as a community verdict, but as suspicious behavior by the mods.
I think the solution is for us to explain what is happening, what users did and what we did, and what the underlying principles are. If past experience is any guide, this won't satisfy all of the suspicions, but it will help with some of them, and it will satisfy the bulk of the community, which is the most that can be hoped for.
Internet is getting worse every day, who knows what kind of censorship they are or will be using. Maybe it isn't necessary to censor the word here but still good as kind of a trigger discipline I guess.
If somebody wants to actually detect and censor talking about rape, they certainly have the technological capability to also censor all the intentional misspellings.
IMO, the only case when this works is when an organization is censoring it because of compliance but intentionally does a minimal effort at it.
It is not the rape that traumatizes the victims it is the bystanders not stopping it. And yes everyone knows what is going on. Parents not protecting their children is the deepest form of damage.
That's what happens when upvotes put a story on the front page and then user flags take it off the front page. This is standard stuff. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42639323 and the other links there.
if more people downvote / individual flag it than upvote it, then how did it rise to the front page to start with?
I recall multiple HN Epstein discussions that didn't get flagged (in the sense of Net Flagged status assignment by HN, not talking about individual acts of individual flagging)
It would really help the discourse if HN used separate terms for the button for users to individually cast a flag, and the [flagged] marking by HN: a suggestion would be to give the latter a different word like [perverse], as the literal meaning of perverse come from Latin "per" (away) "vertere" (to turn), i.e. "turned away" or "to turn a blind eye" as one would say in English.
That would seem more apt as it describes what is done, and allows HN commenters to talk about the difference between individual acts of users pressing the "flag" button versus HN mapping that to an attention modulating action.
For example discussions about the method of mapping upvotes, views, flaggings, and their relative timing distributions, onto the either "attended" or "perverse" status.
I'm afraid I don't understand that second part of your comment - it's not clear to me what distinction you're wanting to appear in the UI. But I can answer this part:
> if more people downvote / individual flag it than upvote it, then how did it rise to the front page to start with?
It's because most of the flags only happen later. Upvotes get a post onto the frontpage, then other users see it on the frontpage and think "wtf? that doesn't belong on HN" and flag it. This is especially common with sensational or outrageous stories, since those qualities inevitably attract upvotes—but then later they attract flags. You can think of flags as a bit like an immune system in that sense.
Unlike other stories critical of Sam Altman, it's very suspicious the way this is so quickly and systematically downvoted and flagged every single time it's posted.
This happened the last time this was posted too. Sam Altman deserves the right to defend himself in court as does Ann to tell her story (who personally I believe).
The good news is that with the lawsuit it will be in the news more and much harder to silence, maybe at some point we can have a proper discussion about it on HN without people (or more likely bots) trying to memoryhole it every single time.
The mods haven't done anything. This story is being flagged by users and, after looking at the data, I believe it's a genuine community response. (Edit: here's comment I just ran across, which expresses some of this response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42638174).
You have a vested interest to protect Sam Altman and sure enough this story is not allowed on the front page. This site has many forms of censorship built in, yet you always act with plausible deniability, blaming "the users" or worse yet "the algorithm" (as if that's not fully in your control). I hope you know that most people aren't buying it.
It's not a question of blaming, it's a question of saying what is happening. You're of course free to believe what you wish, but I think you're wrong about "most people". The bulk of the community is satisfied with what we're doing. How do I know that? Because if it weren't the case, we'd never hear the end of it. I've been on the wrong side of the community in the past, I know what that's like, and this isn't it. Actually, being on the wrong side of the community is such a painful experience that striving to avoid that is basically the principle that drives how we operate HN.
As for Sam: this site has hosted countless negativity fests about Sam (as well as other celebrities people love to post things about). This story is different, and the way we're handling it would be the same if you replaced his name with anyone else's.
No, that's clearly wrong. These posts all have tons of upvotes (without even being allowed to stay on the front page!), the community wants them.
Edit: You can downvote my comments and censor my account all you want. I learned today that to engage with this site one must take an oppositional stance. I'll just make a new account since this one is clearly compromised. I encourage everyone to do the same. Hell make 10 every time you see you're censored.
That is a misunderstanding. Community opinion isn't just expressed in upvotes. It's expressed in upvotes and flags. Countless stories make the front page, only to be flagged off it by other users. This happens many times a day.
I didn't downvote you, and indeed no one on HN (including me) can downvote a direct reply to them.
You're telling me there were 40+ flags on this? GTFO.
I was seriously using this site for fun, but this is just straight bullshit so now you've turned this user into someone who was enthusiastic to someone who knows this place is garbage. Streisand effect on steroids.
I'm saying that I liked this site until I noticed that my submission (the only one I've ever made) got 40+ points and never made it to the front-page. Then I noticed that my upvotes don't work. Then I saw you lie about how my post made it to the front-page and started getting flags (it never made it there). So why would I be anything other than hostile?
Ah, you're correct that your submission never made the front page (I just checked). Sorry for getting that wrong! I was describing a common pattern and wrongly assumed that this was a case of it.
It doesn't change the important point, though, which is that the story was downranked because the flags won over the upvotes. It just means that the flags happened while the story was on /newest rather than the frontpage. Actually that is is an even stronger community response.
If it had 40+ points why wouldn't it make it to the front page? Do you see why this would be annoying to say the least to someone? I also don't believe you that it got tons of flags while on /new. You've already lied to me about my post making the front page and that my upvotes aren't censored.
> If it had 40+ points why wouldn't it make it to the front page?
For the reason I already explained: because the rank is computed from upvotes and flags, not just upvotes. The flag input proved stronger than the upvote input.
I haven't lied to you! I never lie to users, partly because it would make me feel bad, and partly because it would be dumb. I'm not going to do anything to risk the good will of the community, which is the only value that HN really has.
It's true that I make mistakes, but that's different from lying, obviously. I can't not make mistakes but I can and do correct them when I find out about them.
I wouldn't even blame it on the mods and higher ups. There are enough people here invested in Sam Altman either through YC or AI that mutually aligned interests alone will cause a story like this to get squashed, every time. No conspiracy needed.
And that doesn't even take into account the number of people who consider all discussions of this kind to be categorically off topic, and would flag it on principle regardless of the context.
If you do a search for the word rape, there are tons of discussions about it, so it's definitely not categorically off topic. I'm going to email hn@ycombinator.com per the FAQ since the way this keeps happening feels abusive and against the spirit of HN.
Flags mostly come from the community; sometimes from the mods. When the post is a submission (as opposed to a comment), they almost always come from the community.
There's nothing new in the HN community functioning this way. In fact, it's because the HN community functions this way that the site exists at all; otherwise it would have long ago turned into just another current affairs or celebrity gossip page.
I downvoted a few of them, and so did lots of other users—correctly so, as your comments (not just in this thread) have often been unsubstantive and/or flamebait. Can you please not post like that? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
I upvoted your comment, but my upvotes are censored so sadly it didn't impact your score. This site is completely a propaganda arm for YC and their interests.
I am increasingly convinced we need to separate content storage from recommendation algorithms.
When an organization does both, it has perverse incentives such as maximizing add-profit or user-engagement by building echo chambers instead of doing what benefits the users - such as maximizing truth-seeking and getting an accurate picture of opinions among the general population.
I don't know, but it seems to be something he says on every iteration of this article, which keeps getting posted and reposted. Looking through Annie's story certainly didn't leave me with a sense of certainty about anything, and the notion of "recovered memories" is more than just controversial.
Sam and his family’s statement
https://xcancel.com/sama/status/1876780763653263770
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[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42630197
The dupe is flagged which is strange since this seems relative to the HN community.
You can find plenty of other sexual harassment claims in the HN history which are not flagged.
You know this same story has been posted on this place for at least 2 years? Every time (since the first couple at least) it gets flagged, called a dupe, and people in the comments wring their hands about WHY that is.
What's the interesting conversation that's supposed to emerge from this? "I believe her." "I don't." is about the limit. There's no new info other than a suit being filed, there's a ton of heat, but almost no light.
So people flag it, then other people act like there's a conspiracy to flag it.
It's important to have a discussion about one of the most powerful people in tech behaving in a completely immoral fashion. Is it safe to use OpenAI, I think not. This site has a vested interest in squashing that very important discussion, so we're not allowed to have it here.
You might not want to believe that other people don't see things the way you do, and you might prefer to believe that 'the site' is disagreeing with you instead. I'd just ask... what's the "conversation" that needs to happen? Why would this change the "safety" of using OpenAI?
How is intellectual curiosity satisfied by a page of people who don't know the truth of the matter, speculating about what-if's that we can't possibly resolve with the information we have? That's tabloid talk, and as far as OpenAI goes that company is a whole lot more than Sam Altman.
Examples of why this is important: Will asking OpenAI about this topic yield biased results? How about other topics? Would you trust OpenAI to not spy on your prompts? Are they selling your data? Leadership morals matter.
It does look like awful lot of gaslighting to paint her as mentally ill. some quick web search showed she is the black sheep of the family. and she seem to exhibit behaviors r-pe victims commonly do like using sexuality to empower themselves (having an active onl-fans account) and such.
Just like in Lavinia Woodward's case. Success sometimes gives you this kind of privilege to bypass justice. The dupe thread seems to have been flagged and this thread might be flagged as well. Not hard to see what is going on tbh.
Honest question: why do you censor the word rape?
I skimmed HN's FAQ and I see no mention of forbidden topics or words and it seems the mod team prides itself on openness (does not make it true, i know). Do you believe your comment or your account would face negative consequences for using that word?
There's no problem with plain language about rape or other topics on HN. Plain language is preferable.
The issue here is not whether people are allowed to use specific words, it's whether the story gratifies intellectual curiosity, as the site guidelines require for a story to be on topic (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). The community verdict, arrived at via the standard tug-of-war between upvotes and flags, is that it does not. Some users are unhappy with that and are seeing it not as a community verdict, but as suspicious behavior by the mods.
I think the solution is for us to explain what is happening, what users did and what we did, and what the underlying principles are. If past experience is any guide, this won't satisfy all of the suspicions, but it will help with some of them, and it will satisfy the bulk of the community, which is the most that can be hoped for.
Internet is getting worse every day, who knows what kind of censorship they are or will be using. Maybe it isn't necessary to censor the word here but still good as kind of a trigger discipline I guess.
Why would it work though?
If somebody wants to actually detect and censor talking about rape, they certainly have the technological capability to also censor all the intentional misspellings.
IMO, the only case when this works is when an organization is censoring it because of compliance but intentionally does a minimal effort at it.
It is not the rape that traumatizes the victims it is the bystanders not stopping it. And yes everyone knows what is going on. Parents not protecting their children is the deepest form of damage.
I was seeing this on the front page of HN mere moments ago and now it’s gone.
That's what happens when upvotes put a story on the front page and then user flags take it off the front page. This is standard stuff. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42639323 and the other links there.
Just out of curiosity
if more people downvote / individual flag it than upvote it, then how did it rise to the front page to start with?
I recall multiple HN Epstein discussions that didn't get flagged (in the sense of Net Flagged status assignment by HN, not talking about individual acts of individual flagging)
It would really help the discourse if HN used separate terms for the button for users to individually cast a flag, and the [flagged] marking by HN: a suggestion would be to give the latter a different word like [perverse], as the literal meaning of perverse come from Latin "per" (away) "vertere" (to turn), i.e. "turned away" or "to turn a blind eye" as one would say in English.
That would seem more apt as it describes what is done, and allows HN commenters to talk about the difference between individual acts of users pressing the "flag" button versus HN mapping that to an attention modulating action.
For example discussions about the method of mapping upvotes, views, flaggings, and their relative timing distributions, onto the either "attended" or "perverse" status.
I'm afraid I don't understand that second part of your comment - it's not clear to me what distinction you're wanting to appear in the UI. But I can answer this part:
> if more people downvote / individual flag it than upvote it, then how did it rise to the front page to start with?
It's because most of the flags only happen later. Upvotes get a post onto the frontpage, then other users see it on the frontpage and think "wtf? that doesn't belong on HN" and flag it. This is especially common with sensational or outrageous stories, since those qualities inevitably attract upvotes—but then later they attract flags. You can think of flags as a bit like an immune system in that sense.
Unlike other stories critical of Sam Altman, it's very suspicious the way this is so quickly and systematically downvoted and flagged every single time it's posted.
This happened the last time this was posted too. Sam Altman deserves the right to defend himself in court as does Ann to tell her story (who personally I believe).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37785072
The good news is that with the lawsuit it will be in the news more and much harder to silence, maybe at some point we can have a proper discussion about it on HN without people (or more likely bots) trying to memoryhole it every single time.
Amen, hopefully someday we can get a proper civil discussion on this. Shame on the HN mods and higher ups really for trying to censor this.
The mods haven't done anything. This story is being flagged by users and, after looking at the data, I believe it's a genuine community response. (Edit: here's comment I just ran across, which expresses some of this response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42638174).
More here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42637131
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42637022
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42632335
You have a vested interest to protect Sam Altman and sure enough this story is not allowed on the front page. This site has many forms of censorship built in, yet you always act with plausible deniability, blaming "the users" or worse yet "the algorithm" (as if that's not fully in your control). I hope you know that most people aren't buying it.
It's not a question of blaming, it's a question of saying what is happening. You're of course free to believe what you wish, but I think you're wrong about "most people". The bulk of the community is satisfied with what we're doing. How do I know that? Because if it weren't the case, we'd never hear the end of it. I've been on the wrong side of the community in the past, I know what that's like, and this isn't it. Actually, being on the wrong side of the community is such a painful experience that striving to avoid that is basically the principle that drives how we operate HN.
As for Sam: this site has hosted countless negativity fests about Sam (as well as other celebrities people love to post things about). This story is different, and the way we're handling it would be the same if you replaced his name with anyone else's.
No, that's clearly wrong. These posts all have tons of upvotes (without even being allowed to stay on the front page!), the community wants them.
Edit: You can downvote my comments and censor my account all you want. I learned today that to engage with this site one must take an oppositional stance. I'll just make a new account since this one is clearly compromised. I encourage everyone to do the same. Hell make 10 every time you see you're censored.
That is a misunderstanding. Community opinion isn't just expressed in upvotes. It's expressed in upvotes and flags. Countless stories make the front page, only to be flagged off it by other users. This happens many times a day.
I didn't downvote you, and indeed no one on HN (including me) can downvote a direct reply to them.
This you? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42640271
You're telling me there were 40+ flags on this? GTFO.
I was seriously using this site for fun, but this is just straight bullshit so now you've turned this user into someone who was enthusiastic to someone who knows this place is garbage. Streisand effect on steroids.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you're asking here.
I'm saying that I liked this site until I noticed that my submission (the only one I've ever made) got 40+ points and never made it to the front-page. Then I noticed that my upvotes don't work. Then I saw you lie about how my post made it to the front-page and started getting flags (it never made it there). So why would I be anything other than hostile?
Ah, you're correct that your submission never made the front page (I just checked). Sorry for getting that wrong! I was describing a common pattern and wrongly assumed that this was a case of it.
It doesn't change the important point, though, which is that the story was downranked because the flags won over the upvotes. It just means that the flags happened while the story was on /newest rather than the frontpage. Actually that is is an even stronger community response.
If it had 40+ points why wouldn't it make it to the front page? Do you see why this would be annoying to say the least to someone? I also don't believe you that it got tons of flags while on /new. You've already lied to me about my post making the front page and that my upvotes aren't censored.
> If it had 40+ points why wouldn't it make it to the front page?
For the reason I already explained: because the rank is computed from upvotes and flags, not just upvotes. The flag input proved stronger than the upvote input.
I haven't lied to you! I never lie to users, partly because it would make me feel bad, and partly because it would be dumb. I'm not going to do anything to risk the good will of the community, which is the only value that HN really has.
It's true that I make mistakes, but that's different from lying, obviously. I can't not make mistakes but I can and do correct them when I find out about them.
And like I already explained I don't believe you for one second. Have a good night.
I wouldn't even blame it on the mods and higher ups. There are enough people here invested in Sam Altman either through YC or AI that mutually aligned interests alone will cause a story like this to get squashed, every time. No conspiracy needed.
And that doesn't even take into account the number of people who consider all discussions of this kind to be categorically off topic, and would flag it on principle regardless of the context.
If you do a search for the word rape, there are tons of discussions about it, so it's definitely not categorically off topic. I'm going to email hn@ycombinator.com per the FAQ since the way this keeps happening feels abusive and against the spirit of HN.
As far as I know, flags come from the community, not the mods. Hacker News is designed so that it doesn't even take many flags to affect a thread.
You can complain to the mods all you like but there's nothing you can do about the zeitgeist. The mods also won't change their own policies.
Flags mostly come from the community; sometimes from the mods. When the post is a submission (as opposed to a comment), they almost always come from the community.
This is democracy and freedom we get these days.
and yup... the thread is gone.
There's nothing new in the HN community functioning this way. In fact, it's because the HN community functions this way that the site exists at all; otherwise it would have long ago turned into just another current affairs or celebrity gossip page.
[flagged]
I downvoted a few of them, and so did lots of other users—correctly so, as your comments (not just in this thread) have often been unsubstantive and/or flamebait. Can you please not post like that? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[flagged]
I upvoted your comment, but my upvotes are censored so sadly it didn't impact your score. This site is completely a propaganda arm for YC and their interests.
The mod even admitted that "the algorithm" doesn't allow my upvotes to show: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42639821
I am increasingly convinced we need to separate content storage from recommendation algorithms.
When an organization does both, it has perverse incentives such as maximizing add-profit or user-engagement by building echo chambers instead of doing what benefits the users - such as maximizing truth-seeking and getting an accurate picture of opinions among the general population.
Agreed. I am quite pessimistic about what can be achieved though.
Cheers, at least we have Stimulation Clicker on the front page
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42611536
[flagged]
Here's the report from 2023 that eventually triggered this lawsuit: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam-altman...
Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38311509
I believe everything Annie says here.
Why?
I don't know, but it seems to be something he says on every iteration of this article, which keeps getting posted and reposted. Looking through Annie's story certainly didn't leave me with a sense of certainty about anything, and the notion of "recovered memories" is more than just controversial.
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