Posted by giuliomagnifico 3/29/2025
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43223083 (March 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42661453 (Jan 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42526674 (Dec 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38225621 (Nov 2023)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37358816 (Sept 2023)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36994995 (Aug 2023)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35646889 (April 2023)
Occasionally, a [dead] post is actually good for HN. (Even banned accounts sometimes post good submissions or comments, and we don't necessarily want those to remain invisible.) In such cases, users can vouch for the [dead] post to unkill it, i.e. to take it out of the [dead] state and restore it to full public visibility. Only a tiny fraction of [dead] posts get restored in this way, so the vast majority of posts by banned accounts remain [dead].
We're sometimes asked why we allow banned accounts to continue to post to HN (albeit in a [dead] state). Wouldn't it be better to block them altogether? It's a bit counterintuitive, but this would actually be worse. Many of the banned users would simply create new accounts—and those comments would be publicly visible until we caught them and banned them again. So, paradoxically, allowing banned accounts to keep posting (but in a default-invisible state) is the way to minimize their effect on HN. Trying to restrict them further would just end up exposing more people to the abusive posts.
The main disadvantage of this design, in my experience, is that users sometimes forget that they turned 'showdead' on in their profile, and then wonder why they're seeing such dreadful stuff in the comments! So if you turn 'showdead' on, please remember what this means: you're basically signing up to see the worst stuff that the internet has to offer on this forum.
Why turn the setting on at all? Well, many HN users are the curious sort who either want to see everything under the hood, or who feel strongly about censorship and want the freedom to decide for themselves what they think about banned accounts. Also, not all the posts that end up in the [dead] state are bad—there are many ways for a good post to end up [dead] by mistake (including false positives by spam filters), and users with 'showdead' turn on are able to vouch for those and restore them.
But what were these comments that you're referring to? If they're as bad as you say, I need to see them.
(https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-task-force-combat-ant...)
But what I am alluding to is that that account signed up just to leave that Russian-sounding comment. And now it has been flagged. Russo-bot.
That’s what’s supposed to happen. The pendulums swing. It’s fairly definite at this point that the buyer’s remorse from trump will cause a swing back to the left. And so on and so forth.
If we’re going to insist on living in a two party system, then this is the consequence. This is how the system moderates.
The right and the left never moderate. It’s always the system that keeps order over time.
We do not have a left. I honestly am impressed at the system that has somehow made the democrats seem like "the left".
They're quite literally right wing politicians. Their primary difference with Republicans are that "we have a good thing going for our pockets right now, let's not shock the boat too much."
There are _exceptions_ to democrats that may be considered _slightly left_, but those are exceptions. Not the norm.
I do generally happen to think that diversity, gender equality, freedom of speech, and public health are causes that are important. I don't feel like being told to shut up about it because someone else is a fascist is very productive.
this is really entirely subjective and I'd be surprised if something like this isn't moderated for being flamebait
The Trump administration drastically cut the budget of basically every govt agency that does or supports scientific research and decimated staffing. Is that not an objective fact? Is there some alternative one?
Semantic nihilism. It’s a basic fact of political science that governments enact policies in order to achieve outcomes. Or if you prefer cybernetics, there’s always Stafford Beer: “The purpose of a system is what is does.”
What would conservatives done if Obama said the same? Trump is “ingroup” and the law only protects him, it does not bind him.
Obama? Definitely outgroup, and definitely bound by the law.
Liberalism, in the classic sense, is the opposite: the law protects and binds all, equally.
I doubt you are as “in group” as you might think you are.
https://open.substack.com/pub/unsafescience/p/we-tried-to-wa...
https://www.idsnews.com/article/2025/03/iu-professor-bloomin...
Why would you make an assumption in this case with no evidence or data? Are you saying the majority of FBI arrests are now driven by politics? Would you be surprised to learn that there have been similar foreign national arrests under previous administrations?
I feel like I’m living on a different planet. I am not saying things are OK in the US at the moment, but … are you kidding me? This is one of the most asinine statements I’ve ever read.
This is it, friend. You're in it. The visible damage hasn't accumulated too much yet, but all the things that fascist regimes do, are being done now. You might argue that Americans are fighting back, that lawfirms targetted by EO are refusing to comply, that the ACLU is fighting in court, that protestors are in the streets. This was all happening in Germany in the mid 30s too. It didn't stop what happened, and the passivity of the "it's not that bad" crowd was a big part of that.
But I think the analogy in TFA is also insane.
Why? This change has happened over the course of a couple of months. The trajectory is there.
I’ll keep reiterating: I don’t think what’s happening in the US is ok. But I also don’t think the analogy is ok.
That's what people in Russia were thinking in 2012. And now people there are literally arrested just for saying a wrong thing.
I don’t.
No, I don’t think it’s ok, and I don’t understand how you would make this assumption about my opinion unless you’re just speaking emotionally or intentionally rage baiting.
It’s like you didn’t read my comment.
Anecdotally, I work with many people who frequently travel to the US, as well as a fair few academics over there. There is a clear general consensus that people are significantly altering their plans to reconsider travel to the US, and that others are actively looking to relocate.
There is a very real—not imagined—possibility that some of those people will be subject to being rounded up and detained. The situation isn't obviously as severe as Nazi-era Germany, but it is absolutely true that people are being reminded of this. So why is the comparison anything other than apt?
I have lived in a country far worse than the US is now or is likely to be - things like journalists being disappeared. Even there the Nazi comparison was excessive. People pushed back and things are much better now.
>Edit, thanks for the updoots kind strangers!!
Just evolutionary biology and psychology.
You see an ‘other’.. Assume the worst.
That’s worked for hundreds of thousands of years. Millions actually.
Everyone does it. Because no one can help doing it. No one who is human anyway.
They can still speak openly with risking their job or funding?
Not going to waste my time any longer flagging and downvoting political content and trying to keep HN good. The propagandists and hate have won and have majority control over it now. Every day a third of the front page is political/social/mainstream news content which isn't supposed to be here. Adios. Time to find the next place.
Doesn't matter what side,... An echo chamber is bad regardless. If I want one, I would go elsewhere. Perhaps there's an idea in this community that "we are better than the rest, and can carry out political discussions, because, after all, we are right in our opinions, and we only do it when 'necessary'".
Aren't there a solution, like create HN/pol... Or create a separate TLD for it.
If you are going to have political content, can't there be a way to filter it out?
I limit myself to analyze the political stuff for the sport of pointing out bad rethorics and such, not because I care about either side or any side, but for the sake of analysis.
Some EU countries have more of a Russian position on these things!
I very much is a question of national, not EU law so you cannot generalise about the EU.
Where the EU does have laws on these things it has been very anti-privacy and pro-surveillance.
(Had my phone swiped once)
If you have adequate physical security it is less necessary thus my home desktop is not encrypted.
A scientist should not worry about having a "wrong" finding about the actual world stored on their digital devices, period.
A don't have a burner phone and within the extended European continent never have felt the need to, including things like the Balkans.
Five eyes, Russia, China, etc are happy you’re comfortable.
Burner devices may work when you want to protect sensitive information the adversary does not already have. But if you are more worried about authorities making your life difficult, because they don't like you, burner devices may just make your situation worse. From their perspective, it's clear evidence that you are actively trying to hide something.
I don't get bothered and every one is nice to me. But I base my experience on what is in front of me and not what I read online.
Problem with that approach is it makes you entirely blind to change right up until the moment you experience it personally.
It's entirely possible to have a dozen good encounters at borders and only the 13th is bad. Or maybe the situation changed in the last week and you just didn't travel in that timespan.
Casting the net a bit wider and considering other people's experience increases the sample size & liveness of data. (at the cost of some reliability ofc)
I have never been robbed, never broken into, never been shot at, never had my car stolen and don't know anyone who has.
Not saying you should, just that it is a valuable supplement
Now every time I hear one of these stories I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop and hear about how the frog biologist attended Prigozhin’s funeral (purely out of recognition for his work as a chef, of course)
If we had back then it wouldn’t have struck me as crazy if we’d considered the IRA a terrorist group. That we didn’t do this doesn’t mean we’re locked out of it forever.
Designated by whom? I personally have never once felt "terror" from the existence of Hamas nor do I feel confronted by those who would go to the funerals of it's leaders.
Those are either some seriously tricky terrorists or this designation was never meaningful to the citizens of this country.
Maybe you haven't felt terror from them because you aren't one of the innocent Jewish civilians who have been deliberately targeted. Can you go back to reddit where your similarly deranged opinions are tolerated, and stay off of what is meant to be a relatively sane forum?
It's as transparent as it is craven. In the 1960s 50% of white people polled said that MLK was hurting the effort for civil rights. It's because they didn't want to want those civil rights to begin with, in the same way that you're clearly totally cool with the genocide and don't want rights for those who opposed it.
I would describe attending this "funeral" as merely "arriving too late". Hitler was dead, Germany was in ruins.
I'd have more questions about somebody who travelled for the funeral of Levrentiy Beria, because it appears some people (unaware, or deliberately without thinking about what Hitler had ordered done) liked Hitler, I can't find any records of people who liked Beria, they only feared him.
The idea that politics and science as a practice is separated is a myth.
CS Professor arrested today https://www.reddit.com/r/immigration/comments/1jmrtzz/indian...
So? Does being a professor give you some kind of immunity against crimes?
The state has been able to prove precisely zero crimes in a court of law thus far. By Rubio’s admission, they may be arresting without warrants. The criminals are the ones covering their faces while pretending to act under the colour of law.
Wow, in your country does the entire criminal justice process take place in the course of the same day of the arrest? Interesting. Care to share details?
No, in my country--America--when an officer goes out to arrest someone for crimes, they typically need a warrant. I am unaware of a single one of these recent ICE arrests having even met that threshold.
Like, we've got plainsclothes officers wearing masks conducting illegal arrests and then a separate cadre of Stadtpolizei moving said warantlessly detained across state and national borders in a blatant attempt to outrun court orders. Each of these people is wilfully and knowingly breaking serious laws. They won't be punished under this administration. But we need to absolutely make an example out of them in the future.