{"id":383,"date":"2016-12-12T01:57:45","date_gmt":"2016-12-12T01:57:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/achangeiscoming.net\/?p=383"},"modified":"2016-12-12T01:57:45","modified_gmt":"2016-12-12T01:57:45","slug":"learning-hacker-news-detox-experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/2016\/12\/12\/learning-hacker-news-detox-experiment\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning from Hacker News’ “Detox” Experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"Political<\/p>\n

The guys from YCombinator (YC) who run the popular Hacker News (HN) discussion site have always been wary of allowing political discussions.\u00a0 YC\u2019s original CEO Paul, current CEO Sam, lead moderator Dan, and key influencers on the site like Thomas argue that political topics inevitably lead to acrimonious and low-quality discussions.\u00a0 Over the years, HN has done a lot to cut down on political discussion.*<\/p>\n

Of course, politics aren’t completely banned.**\u00a0 Many aspects of technology and entrepreneurship are inherently political.\u00a0 Just like everywhere else online, these discussions got more heated over the course of 2016.\u00a0 By October, when part-time YC partner Peter gave $1.25 million to Trump\u2019s campaign<\/a> and Paul claimed on Twitter<\/a> that few had done more than Sam to help defeat him, it was hard to avoid politics on HN.<\/p>\n

The frequency and intensity of political discussions continued to increased after the election.\u00a0 And the tone became less civil; mirroring the trends across the US, more and more people on HN shared opinions that others found sexist, racist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, etc. etc. etc.<\/p>\n

So in early December, Dan (aka dang) announced an experiment: a week-long \u201cpolitical detox\u201d, where political stories were banned. Some people weren\u2019t quite sure what this meant, so Dan clarified:<\/p>\n

The main concern here is pure politics: the conflicts around party, ideology, nation, race, gender, class, and religion that get people hot and turn into flamewars on the internet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Of course it’s delusional”<\/h1>\n

\"nneonneo:<\/a><\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, the announcement got a lot of support.\u00a0 nneonneo’s top-ranked comment is a good example.<\/p>\n

There was also a lot of pushback.\u00a0\u00a0 Nitasha Tiku’s Tech Commenters Cry Foul After Popular Silicon Valley Forum Bans Politics<\/a> on\u00a0 Buzzfeed<\/em> has some great quotes from Zoe Quinn, Maciej Ceglowski of Pinboard, Danilo Campos of HNWatch, Matthew Garrett, and others.\u00a0 For example:<\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

“Silicon Valley routinely makes impacts on race, gender and class\u2014but discussions of those things is forbidden on Hacker News for a week \ud83e\udd14”<\/p>\n

Danilo, on Twitter<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

And here\u2019s an excerpt<\/a> from the HN discussion<\/p>\n

minimuffins<\/strong>: The idea that we can carve out a space that exists outside of politics and ideology is delusional.<\/p>\n

dang<\/strong> (lead moderator): Of course it’s delusional. The concepts can’t be defined to begin with, nor can they be separated in any consistent way. And still we have to moderate this site.<\/p>\n

jdp23<\/strong> (me!): Perhaps grounding your moderation policies around concepts you know are undefined and inseparable isn’t the best basis for moderating the site.<\/p>\n

dang<\/strong>: It’s the best basis for moderating the site because the alternative is impossible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What could possibly go wrong?<\/h1>\n
\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“Dear @ycombinator: this is fucked up”<\/p>\n

Matthew Garrett, on Twitter<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Looking at the bright side, the experiment did bring a rare moment of unity.\u00a0 People who thought this was a bad policy and people who approved of it joined together in a flagging frenzy.<\/p>\n

ubernostrum<\/strong> flagged and commented every story that had political aspects – and got temporarily banned as a result<\/a>.<\/p>\n

idlewords<\/strong>, minimaxir<\/strong> and I each submitted a story about something that could have a major impact on the tech industry.\u00a0 It got killed each time.<\/p>\n

William Gibson’s New York Times op-ed about privacy met the same fate.<\/p>\n

So did Georgia Wells’ Wall Street Journal article about how tech companies aren’t meeting their own goals for improving diversity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nobody was immune.<\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“YCombinator\u2019s Winter Reading List just got flagged off their own discussion site\u2019s front page for political content.”<\/p>\n

Pinboard, on Twitter<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

What YC learned from the experiment<\/h2>\n

The experiment lasted two days.\u00a0 Dan quietly announced its end<\/a> in a comment on a discussion about regulation.<\/p>\n

\"Although<\/a><\/p>\n

I asked Dan what else they had learned.\u00a0 His reply<\/a><\/p>\n

The main thing we learned is that a change like that won’t solve HN’s civility problem, which was the big question we had. But we learned other interesting things too, like that a week is too long for trying out an idea like this. Also, if we say we’re trying out an idea briefly, some people think we mean permanently. Communication on the internet is hard.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A thread<\/a> asking folks on HN what they had learned didn\u2019t get a lot of traction, but the handful of replies were interesting.\u00a0 For example, here’s what wingerlang<\/strong> said:
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

I didn’t even know it ended.\u00a0*** I read the initial post but since then forgot about it and HN seemed like usual business.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What else can we learn?<\/h1>\n
\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“If your website’s full of assholes, it’s your fault”<\/p>\n

Anil Dash (2011)<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Dan’s main learnings were actually pretty obvious even before the experiment.\u00a0 adrienne<\/strong> was one of many people on HN who predicted<\/a> it:<\/p>\n

\n

I mean, fundamentally my position is the same as Anil Dash’s… Trying to separate out “political” from “apolitical” topics is not going to solve the fucking problem. Being better moderators<\/i> and not letting people be tremendous bigots even if they’re ‘civil’<\/i> are the ways to fix the problem.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Indeed.<\/p>\n

Still, it seems to me that there are some other very interesting things to learn from the experiment.\u00a0 Before I share my thoughts, though, I wanted to once again ask for other perspectives.<\/p>\n

What did you<\/em> learn?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

* For example, the ranking algorithm penalizes stories about politics, and Paul repeatedly tweaked the ranking algorithm to penalize specific topics like the TSA<\/a> or the NSA.\u00a0 The flagging algorithm lets a relatively-small number of people remove a post from active discussion.\u00a0 The \u201ccontroversy detector\u201d shuts down heated discussions; so when a contentious story makes it to the front page, people pile in with lots of strongly-words posts and it quickly drops to page 3 where it\u2019s much harder to find it.\u00a0\u00a0 Ken Shirriff\u2019s 2013 article How Hacker News ranking really works: scoring, controversy, and penalties<\/a> and the accompanying HN discussion<\/a> have more details<\/p>\n

** In fact, from time to time YC actively encourages talking about politics, like when they joined the fight against the anti-internet SOPA bill and it was suddenly a perfectly acceptable topic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

*** wingerlang wasn\u2019t the only one that didn\u2019t even know the ban had ended.\u00a0 For some reason the moderators never made the announcement as a separate thread.\u00a0 Several days later, posts were still being killed for being political – including discussions about Russia potentially hacking<\/em> the US election, which certainly seem on-topic for Hacker<\/em> News.\u00a0 Apparently not<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tWhat could possibly go wrong?\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[418,419,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-diversity","category-social-computing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}