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0 pointsluckylion3y ago0 comments

I find that anything related to Twitter/Musk produces some of the lowest quality comments on HN, and the top comment in this thread is one of them. It's a reddit style "amirite?" comment that does not engage with the topic (Twitter says they've limited reach for "hateful" content, so "impressions" could be down, even if the total number of hateful tweets sent might be up, so it's absolutely not obvious, and it's very questionable how some random person would know which tweets had what amount of impressions), doesn't care to present any reasoning or data, and the user vanishes when asked to substantiate.

Musk brings out the worst in some people. Hearing about him shuts down their brains and they "return to monkey", just throwing feces. And they're certainly not dumb, it just looks like those old spy movies with sleeper agents. One minute your friendly neighbor jokes and smiles and the next he hears some specific sentence on the radio and his programming takes over, his face freezes and he gets his gun and marches towards city hall. That's what I see happening to some people here when Musk gets mentioned.

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VikingCoder3y ago

Hi, I didn't vanish. I have a busy life. And HN has Guidelines [1], and you may want to re-read the last two:

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

> Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.

You appear to be violating both of those guidelines.

You assert that my comment "does not engage with the topic". I disagree. I think I analyzed the submission, and found parts of it worth discussing.

Why did I make the comment I did? I should have taken more time to establish myself, and I'm sorry I opted to quickly highlight rather than to explain. Allow me (now that I have a moment) to explain.

It's a puff piece.

Despite being a puff piece, does it make any actual claims? Yes. Hmmm - maybe it would be interesting to identify the actual claims.

Are any of the claims actually falsifiable? Yes. Hmm - maybe it would be interesting to point out the claims that are actually falsifiable.

Do I think any of the falsifiable claims are demonstrably false? Yes. Hmm - here they are.

Am I sure that they are demonstrably false, and do I have the evidence to back that up? No. Darn. I can't say they're definitively false, but I can at least highlight the two that I have the strongest belief that yes, they are probably wrong.

Hence the only thing I added to them: "I think both of those claims are demonstrably false."

I'm sorry I didn't have time to go find the primary sources that would back up my belief.

1) Our Trust & Safety team... remains strong and well-resourced...

Wow. If you scan through the comments complaining about my comment, I don't see anyone who seems to have any problem with me pointing this one out. We've all seen the articles about the layoffs, firings, and resignations. I believe a recent one identified that there is exactly one (1) person left, doing an important moderation job, in a major market...? I wish I had the reference at hand, to show a primary source.

2) ...impressions on violative content are down over the past month...

If you scroll through the comments, I think you'll see some interesting discussion, including bringing up the Overton Window, and someone even provided references. (Great username, trs8080!) So, it appears folks on HN thought it was worth discussing. I'm glad to see their discussion. Maybe it would have happened without me pointing out that section, but maybe it wouldn't.

Cheers.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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