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2525 points hownottowrite | 58 comments | | HN request time: 2.345s | source | bottom
1. a_c ◴[] No.21192772[source]
Interesting how an incidence in gaming garner more eye balls on the topic of Hong Kong politics than whole month combined. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Good for the people of Hong Kong.

The topic of Hong Kong didn't struck me as sensational/desperate as it deserves until a Hong Kong friend send me this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yXTHODE24Q Am moved by the clip, especially for the first 50s. It is english sub-ed. Would recommend anyone interested in the topic give it a look

replies(14): >>21192859 #>>21193302 #>>21193399 #>>21193545 #>>21193696 #>>21193715 #>>21193861 #>>21193945 #>>21194031 #>>21194344 #>>21194646 #>>21194695 #>>21194770 #>>21196112 #
2. Timpy ◴[] No.21192859[source]
The Taiwan Flag Emoji topic got a lot of attention too. I think that's a fair spread. Censorship, Unicode standards, and Blizzard is kind of the expected overlap of interest topics for Hacker News.
replies(3): >>21193108 #>>21193280 #>>21194185 #
3. a_c ◴[] No.21193108[source]
I realised the Emoji topic https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182705 after posting my comments. Blizzard, emoji, Hong Kong, and in part NBA too[1], once again shows how unpredictable viral-ness can be.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21176976

replies(1): >>21195564 #
4. ehsankia ◴[] No.21193280[source]
Right, general politics is not really in the wheelhouse for HN, but these two specific cases encroached on tech, which is why they got much more attention. Other acts of technological censorship from China also often reach the front page. I don't think there's anything nefarious, it's that those other topics aren't really relevant to HN.
replies(1): >>21193351 #
5. dgzl ◴[] No.21193302[source]
People generally only care about things they care about. I know far more hearthstone players than anything related to Hong Kong.
6. joelx ◴[] No.21193351{3}[source]
We should all boycott Blizzard and the NBA.
replies(1): >>21194028 #
7. blhack ◴[] No.21193399[source]
I had no idea that that second video would have the effect on me that it did. I'm sitting in my office here crying.
replies(3): >>21194253 #>>21194317 #>>21194971 #
8. hendrix23234 ◴[] No.21193545[source]
In the video at mark 01:16 https://youtu.be/0yXTHODE24Q?t=84 there is a quote about "non-believers". Does the chinese government have anything against atheists in their policies ? To my knowledge chinese government does not interfere in personal religious beliefs.
replies(4): >>21193608 #>>21193694 #>>21194634 #>>21196304 #
9. stretchwithme ◴[] No.21193608[source]
Yeah, it's not like they've been harvesting organs of Falun Gong members.
10. throwawaypolicy ◴[] No.21193694[source]
I interpreted "non believers" to be "not believing in the party" not "not believing in religion".

"the Chinese government doesn't interfere in personal religious beliefs" is quite the claim though, considering they literally have concentration camps full of Muslims.

11. curo ◴[] No.21193696[source]
I don't understand why that YouTube video requires age verification. As far as I know that prevents it from being played to anyone not logged in, including embeds, and severely limits people from seeing it.

Social media flagging is censorship. More and more people are calling on videos to be flagged, taken down, etc — then we run into instances like this one where we wish the mechanism wasn't in place at all.

I hope HK brings to world back to a recognition of the important of free speech and that the world brings attention back to HK.

replies(3): >>21193911 #>>21194072 #>>21196808 #
12. mrosett ◴[] No.21193715[source]
That second video is really something. Wow.
replies(1): >>21194597 #
13. legohead ◴[] No.21193861[source]
Iraq needs some attention... Protests have been going on for a week now, 100+ protesters have been killed, thousands hurt.
replies(2): >>21194038 #>>21195762 #
14. ivanbozic ◴[] No.21193911[source]
I believe the age verification kicks in because there are scenes of violence in the video itself, not because of the topic.
15. TeMPOraL ◴[] No.21193945[source]
> Interesting how an incidence in gaming garner more eye balls on the topic of Hong Kong politics than whole month combined.

That's crap. There's a Hong Kong-related story on the front page every couple days for a while now. Perhaps you didn't notice the pagination buttons at the bottom when sorting by date?

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

16. ergothus ◴[] No.21194028{4}[source]
After bnetd I boycotted Blizzard for years. The only tangible result was that I missed out on Warcraft 3. After the 1-click patent, I boycotted Amazon for years. They didn't appear to have missed my money.

I'm all for collective action, but I'm not sure if boycotts are reliable. I've seen companies respond to social pressures, but like net neutrality, when they can make money they just try again more subtilely, and that presumes the original pressure was successful.

I'm not saying we SHOULDN'T boycott Blizzard and the NBA...but do we have other options as well? Governmental action to be backing, companies with clear "good" positions we should promote, etc?

I don't have ideas, I just have a pile of bitterness and hopelessness, and issues like Hong Kong feel a lot more important than 1 click.

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17. phy6 ◴[] No.21194031[source]
Thanks for sharing both links.
18. qnsi ◴[] No.21194038[source]
Where can I follow these protests? r/HongKong is a great place to follow HK protests
19. shrimp_emoji ◴[] No.21194072[source]
>I don't understand why that YouTube video requires age verification. As far as I know that prevents it from being played to anyone not logged in, including embeds, and severely limits people from seeing it.

Yep. Usually, they play when changing from

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yXTHODE24Q
to

  https://www.youtube.com/embed/0yXTHODE24Q
but not this.

But

  youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yXTHODE24Q
works. :D https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Youtube-dl
replies(2): >>21194434 #>>21195131 #
20. iamaelephant ◴[] No.21194185[source]
The emoji topic has nothing to do with Unicode standards and everything to do with Apple capitulating to China.
21. mzzter ◴[] No.21194253[source]
Same, the pain in the voices got to me.
22. closetohome ◴[] No.21194263{5}[source]
I feel like there are different levels here. The Bnetd thing was unfortunate, but still an exceptionally first-world problem. People being beaten to death in the streets may warrant a bit wider reaction.
replies(1): >>21194295 #
23. echelon ◴[] No.21194295{6}[source]
The parent poster isn't claiming that certain issues are more or less pressing than others. Rather, we, as ordinary citizens, have zero control. Individual acts of protest are not working and do not change these companies' behaviors.
replies(1): >>21194853 #
24. bonestamp2 ◴[] No.21194317[source]
Same. I've seen a few of the videos that are used in that video and some of those videos (in longer form) are very powerful too.

For example, that short clip of the blindfolded prisoners on the ground in handcuffs is a drone video that is believed to show religious prisoners being taken to "re-education" camps. Of course, the Hong Kong protesters fear they will also be subject to "re-education" when the Chinese state regains control of Hong Kong as this transition period winds down:

https://observers.france24.com/en/20190925-drone-video-shows...

Also, here is the longer version of the "give me liberty" speech that they used. May be NSFW (coarse language):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLY9BQsd_As

25. theseadroid ◴[] No.21194344[source]
Sorry for not entirely related to the main thread, but since it seems there are many people in this thread knowledgable on what's going on in Hong Kong, I'd like to ask 2 questions. I'm not siding with CCP, but my issue is I'm not sure I can side with the protestors either. Because

1. Does the protestors representing the majority of citizens? If yes at this stage why the working class in Hong Kong hasn't started long term strike yet? I would imagine that the most effective non violence method of protesting by citizens would be stop working. That would for one stop the tax flow to the government.

2. Is it necessary for protestors to be violent against pro-China civilians/properties? I'm aware that the protestors have been subject to violence from both police and mobs alike, but fighting for democracy should be a higher cause than revenge? Aren't they fight for freedom of speech among others? Or it's just freedom for themselves and violence and totalitarianism for who else disagrees? [1]

Again I love freedom to the point I've spent many years fighting it for myself and helped a few people. I support Taiwan to be an independent country. But we all know many bad things have been committed under the name of freedom as well. Now I'm not sure if the Hong Kong protestors are fighting under the name of freedom to actually express their hatred toward mainlanders? Thanks for reading and hope my questions would not offend anyone. Just would like to understand the situation better.

Edit: some explanations on the downvotes would be nice.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-GR88q8pIw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPYuGYLesx0 (the planting of CCP flag near the end is really distasteful for me)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NFb2chXt9k

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3031906.... (trashing trains while passengers still inside)

(Toby Guu is a Canadian software developer)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6Jgp7-tXfc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFwGqF3QlVc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcw7lcZA7SE

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26. philipov ◴[] No.21194363{5}[source]
Boycotts only work when a reasonable number of people can make an impact on the bottom line of a corporation. Corporations have grown so large that the size of the group necessary to make that kind of impact is as large as a large corporation. Viral social media witch hunts can have that kind of impact, so if you want to organize a boycott, you better hire a PR company.
27. Ajedi32 ◴[] No.21194434{3}[source]
Thanks. It's really obnoxious that they make you sign-in to verify your age, rather than just enter your birth date like some other sites. Especially since AFAIK it's impossible to create a Google account these days without giving them your phone number (thus exposing your identity). For politically sensitive videos such as this, such restrictions seem like a particularly bad idea.
replies(1): >>21194703 #
28. praptak ◴[] No.21194469{5}[source]
Boycotting is the ethical thing to do but it almost never works. What works? I guess the same things that worked for women and blacks - enough people willing to stick their necks out and organise politically.
29. lawnchair_larry ◴[] No.21194597[source]
A few comments refer to a second video, but the parent only has 1 video link. What are you referring to?
replies(1): >>21194755 #
30. cat199 ◴[] No.21194634[source]
CCP is officially atheist.
31. nbardy ◴[] No.21194646[source]
Labeling this as "an incidence of gaming" is a framing that misses the main conflict of the situation. This real incidence here is an American company practicing censorship on behalf of the CCP.
32. stedaniels ◴[] No.21194660[source]
1. Any short or long-term strike action would hurt the protestors more than the government due to lack of food and welfare.

2. Violence against Pro government folk is bad. However there has also been a lot of documented instances of Pro government forces being dressed as protestors and sparking violence.

From what I've seen it all started remarkably peaceful and had since been escalated to a position where the government has free rein. Not something the protestors wanted.

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33. dang ◴[] No.21194695[source]
> an incidence in gaming garner more eye balls on the topic of Hong Kong politics than whole month combined

That's definitely not true. Hong Kong has been discussed a great deal here, and China even more. These are probably the most-discussed topics of the last month; if not, I can't think of what would be. Perhaps climate change.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

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34. SirLotsaLocks ◴[] No.21194703{4}[source]
I'm pretty sure you can, but if you're creating a lot of the mat once they begin to require it.
replies(1): >>21195390 #
35. blhack ◴[] No.21194755{3}[source]
The second link in the comment. I made this mistake two in my comment.
36. theseadroid ◴[] No.21194756{3}[source]
1. Some non-vital sectors can go on strike without impacting food/welfare which has been done in the west for many times? Not every sector needs to be on strike at the same time?

2. I guess I was having too much hope that democracy fighters would hold onto their principles even when being enticed to use violence against civilians.

replies(1): >>21195183 #
37. jefftk ◴[] No.21194770[source]
Here's a better search link: top stories this month mentioning HK: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=tr...

This one is the top story, but "Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong", "Hong Kong protest safety app banned from iOS store", "Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests", and others all got substantial attention.

38. closetohome ◴[] No.21194853{7}[source]
And my point was that this has a better chance of success because the cause is more widely understandable and sympathetic than a lawsuit over IP.
39. mistermann ◴[] No.21194971[source]
> I am willing to die for this. Why? Because this is our home. Why won't you fight for your home? As simple as that. We are trying to do our best to fight for at least two or three decades. Do you see the students around here? When 2047 comes, they will all be slaves. When 2047 comes, the students will all become middle-aged, and they will all be slaves, we will all be slaves. If we don't fight now, we don't have another chance.

I can't help but think of the similar scene from LOTR:

> The power of the enemy is growing. Sauron will use his puppet Saruman to destroy the people of Rohan. Isengard has been unleashed. The Eye of Sauron now turns to Gondor, the last free kingdom of Men. His war on this country will come swiftly. He senses the Ring is close. The strength of the Ringbearer is failing. In his heart, Frodo begins to understand. The quest will claim his life. You know this... you have foreseen it. It is the risk we all took. In the gathering dark, the will of the Ring grows strong. It works hard now to find its way back into the hands of Men. Men, who are so easily seduced by its power. The young Captain of Gondor has but to extend his hands, take the Ring for his own and the world will fall. It is close now, so close to achieving its goal. For Sauron will have dominion of all life on this Earth, even unto the ending of the world. The time of the Elves is over. Do we leave Middle-earth to its fate? Do we let them stand alone?

It's fun to think about how this metaphorically applies to modern day planet earth. For example, "The Ring" could be, say, unrivaled permanent global superpower status, "China" could be Sauron, Hong Kong could be Middle Earth, and "the West" could be the elves. One significant difference however is that unlike the elves, we don't have a Valinor to flee to. And we might not have to wait until 2047 before we see this all unfold.

Now of course it's easy to chuckle at this as silly speculation and hyperbole, but really, is it literally not possible? Look at how quickly China has risen, and not only utterly unopposed by anyone, but aided by the West to the very, very best of their ability, with no end in sight (for the rise, or the aid).

But wait, am I implying that we should be fearful because Chinese people are bad, and I am simply demonstrating the fearful, small-minded thinking of your typical racist white person? This is indeed one possibility. Another simultaneous possibility is that what I actually fear is tyranny, except as a result of things I allude to in another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21194097), many modern educated Western people seem to have become unable to think clearly about topics that have a racial component. Due to multiple decades of righteous and well-intentioned anti-racism indoctrination, hyper-reinforced over the last few years by various forms of propaganda and excessive public consumption of not-actually-consistent-with-objetive-reality social media content, our heuristics seem to have become hyperactive to the degree that we can no longer think rationally on certain topics. Most everyone can appreciate the risk of tyranny faced under the Nazis, and many seem able (if not enthusiastic!) to envision something similar returning under someone like Trump, but simply add a different color of skin into the equation and the ability to simply even envision such things not only disappears, but is replaced with an extremely passionate denial that such a thing is even possible!

This is the power of heuristics in the human mind, they can render us literally unable to think clearly, even highly intelligent people who have full knowledge of the existence of heuristics.

And I suppose for the above stated reasons it needs to be pointed out: these comments are largely of a speculative nature. I fully realize that LOTR is a movie, that we are not in fact elves, that China is not guaranteed to take over the world, if they do it does not necessarily have to be tyranny (I can even envision it could very well result in finally having worldwide peace and harmony), and so forth and so on. I am simply saying that reality is actually rather complex (as you might notice from a brief perusal of history), the ideas that each of us consume and hold in our brains are not always 100% accurate, and now and then things don't always trend towards improvement, as recent memes making the rounds would have us believe, based on "the facts". As history well demonstrates, occasionally there are times that it would have been prudent to manage risk, even if the risk happens to seems to partially correlate with race. The reality of reality is: despite what we're often lead to believe, anything can happen.

40. amoshi ◴[] No.21195131{3}[source]
Or just add NSFW in front to bypass age verification

https://nsfwyoutube.com/watch?v=0yXTHODE24Q

replies(1): >>21196719 #
41. shkkmo ◴[] No.21195183{4}[source]
You seem to have deliberately missed the point
42. wnkrshm ◴[] No.21195236[source]
I wonder how far away the person with the laser pointer is from that lady in the second video - that pointer seems pretty powerful. With a 5mW class 3R laser you can damage someone's retina at 30-20m still with an accidental exposure, for typical collimation ~1mrad. If the spot is around 4cm in diameter and the laser is typically collimated (at 1mrad), they're about 40m away.
43. PavlovsCat ◴[] No.21195297[source]
> hong kong comments > 10

Just as interesting are all the instances where stories gained dozens of upvotes but very few comments, because they disappeared from the front page within a few hours after rising to the first spot. It's very easy to see even from the outside, if you simply filter for stories that are ranked lower than other stories that have a lower score, are older, and have more comments. Try this on for size:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

That even gets a few results of you increase the score to 100, e.g.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20304526

I remember seeing that just go poof back then. One moment it's at the top, then it quickly sinks, then it's on page 7824.

Just about any subject is discussed a great deal here, because "a great deal" is no hard qualifier at all. But I know few subjects so consistently suppressed and messed with here as Chinese totalitarianism. You could convince me otherwise with a database dump, by making votes and flags public, but not just with mere claims and saying you didn't notice anything. Maybe you didn't, but that really just proves you didn't notice it.

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44. Ajedi32 ◴[] No.21195390{5}[source]
I don't think you can. I tried creating a Google account anonymously once just to see if it was possible. A verified phone number was strictly required and they refused to let me use numbers from any of the anonymized online phone services I tried. Maybe they would have let me skip that step if I was connected over my home IP address rather than TOR, but doing it that way would have sort of defeated the purpose of not giving them my phone number in the first place (anonymity).
45. tsegratis ◴[] No.21195457[source]
1) Stopping HK employee taxes flow, will stop China how? This is not really their concern

2) Peaceful protest and cleaning up after themselves would make many people very happy. They did this during the umbrella and occupy central protests: however many thousands of people protesting, but the streets were spotless. They were very polite at that time; but still increasingly cannot trust the government

For instance the extradition law that started this protest was declared dead multiple times, but we're still awaiting the government to actually do that -- maybe when they re-convene on the 16th it will be removed from the agenda?

I like your views about peaceful protest, but will it lead to the peaceful removal of democracy, expression, belief, etc? Any HKers in support of the government are looking forward to that peaceful life

--

On your links: The SCMP is a China owned news source, and it should be easy to find other videos of police shooting people with rubber bullets, etc??

My wife was just showing me a video of an undercover police officer trashing government property and threatening pepper spray when videoed -- I do appreciate your questions and approach though, and wish life was that simple

> Fighting under the name of freedom to actually express their hatred toward mainlanders?

Sorry you could feel that. I don't. We don't. We apologize

replies(1): >>21195900 #
46. LeoNatan25 ◴[] No.21195564{3}[source]
Don’t forget the well placed South Park episode to pour more gas on the fire.
47. nerfhammer ◴[] No.21195762[source]
there's also big protests in Haiti and Ecuador that are getting even less attention
48. theseadroid ◴[] No.21195900{3}[source]
I asked some questions, rather than trying to convey some arguments, since I'm not expert in any way about Hong Kong situation. The only thing led me making this post is after watching the old lady video I felt it's important to introduce some other viewpoints to the discussion happening on HN, a website I visit daily and I appreciate the HN community. Other than that I don't have any stake in the game. You might watched the beginning of the second video and think I talk about clean up after pretesting? In that video protesters shined laser on that old lady.

I might not have expressed my question clearly. Thanks for bearing with me:

1. Let's say the whole city would like to obtain democracy as fast as they can, strike would be one of the most effective method for nonviolent resistance, no? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_resistance) I'm curious why this way of protesting has not been employed yet?

2. >My wife was just showing me a video of an undercover police officer trashing government property and threatening pepper spray when videoed --

I'm very aware of those police shenanigans. I'm also ok with violence against oppressive police/military. However, does this justify violence against not armed civilians with different opinions? If your answer is yes then it's fine. It would help me understand the perspective of westerners better.

replies(1): >>21197244 #
49. PhasmaFelis ◴[] No.21196112[source]
> Interesting how an incidence in gaming garner more eye balls on the topic of Hong Kong politics than whole month combined.

That's not correct, if you search over the past month and sort by Most Popular. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=tr... This story is #1, but #2 and #3 combined outstrip it by themselves.

And they're both also about American companies censoring themselves and their users on behalf of China. For better or worse, it's that in particular that gets HN's attention.

50. PhasmaFelis ◴[] No.21196304[source]
> To my knowledge chinese government does not interfere in personal religious beliefs.

...

The Chinese government spent 1966 to 1976 violently destroying churches and holy sites of all religions and imprisoning, torturing, and killing priests and worshipers.

Since then they've officially embraced freedom of religion, especially traditional Chinese religion that emphasizes submission to authority, but in the last decade they've been "waging the most severe systematic suppression of Christianity in the country since religious freedom was written into the Chinese constitution in 1982," including "destroying crosses, burning bibles, shutting churches and ordering followers to sign papers renouncing their faith."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_China#People's_Rep...

EDIT: "Account created: 3 hours ago"

51. autoexec ◴[] No.21196719{4}[source]
I've used that for a few years no. You don't even need to enable JS for that domain.
52. MayeulC ◴[] No.21196808[source]
I've often found easier to play that kind of videos, or most "unavailable/blocked in your country" straight from duckduckgo's results page. You can often just look the URL up: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwa...
53. tsegratis ◴[] No.21197244{4}[source]
It's good to ask those things. I can only answer for myself, which is maybe not a western view point, but anyway:

I assume almost everybody thinks shining lasers on the old lady is bad. I don't think violence against civilians is ever justified. However wrong though, it is probably never fully one-sided

The last video you linked ends with a 'civilian' having molotov cocktails thrown at him, and the author of the video uses this to discredit the protests..... But... that 'civilian' has a gun in his hand. He is an undercover officer, and those events happened shortly after police shot someone with a live round in the same area

The police have not pressed charges against mafia caught on camera beating people up, but they have recently arrested a pregnant woman for wearing a facemask*

I think the protesters have been more restrained, but they still definitely make mistakes. Sadly this doesn't get us out of the spiral of violence: to do that the gov and police would have to face loosing their jobs; and maybe just as hard is they would have to accept that the protesters' anger and vitriol as true

--

Nonviolent means were employed during the earlier umbrella revolution and occupy central. These didn't seem to work. But I agree that the anger, vitriol, and violence on all sides is creating another wall...

*facemasks are quite different in HK than the west. The SARS epidemic and close living quarters means people see them as essential to health and safety -- so the facemask ban is bordering on offensive in HK culture

-- Hope that helps. Years ago I was in a warzone where the people were undefended by their government. The church was preaching forgiveness to those who attacked them, and it was impressive to see how effective it was. But it was a very big cost

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54. dang ◴[] No.21197771{3}[source]
For sure, there are submissions on that topic at every level of points, comments, and front page time. It's that way for all the hottest topics; if we replace Hong Kong with climate change in your query the result is similar: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

The hottest topics are both the most discussed and the most "consistently suppressed", as you put it. That sounds like an oxymoron, but it's just what happens when you have 10x more submissions than front page slots. Frontpage space is the scarcest resource on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

Because of this scarcity, everyone who feels strongly about a story feels that their story is being unfairly suppressed on HN, no matter how much coverage it's actually receiving relative to other topics. You seem to feel that Chinese political stories are being unfairly suppressed for who knows what reason—but there are at least as many users (probably many more) who feel that those stories are overrepresented and that HN is going downhill because of it. There's an email in the inbox right now saying so.

The actual moderation principles we use about all this are simple and have been the same for many years. Here they are: HN is a site for intellectual curiosity, so follow-up stories that don't add new information are mostly off topic, as are riler-uppers that don't gratify curiosity so much as stir up indignation and flamewar. When there have been a lot of stories about X lately, the bar for X stories gets raised; HN readers don't like it when the front page has a lot of stuff they've seen already. That's about it. The execution has a lot of subtleties, of course, but those principles fully explain what you're observing.

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55. theseadroid ◴[] No.21198058{5}[source]
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with me friend. I didn’t link any video with police. I know which video you were talking about but it’s not in my previous posts.

Regarding nonviolent, it’s great you read about umbrella revolution and occupy central. But again I think the precise reason those movements failed is because the working class didn’t strike. Many of our modern human rights, such as 40 hours working week, creation of unions, etc are created because workers bind together and strike and disrupted the production of goods. Without a committed working class’s support is exactly the reason previous Hong Kong peaceful movements didn’t work.

Again I’m ok with violence against any oppressive regime. For Hong Kong, I don’t think that alone with achieve freedom. Only when the working class stop paying taxes, stop providing services to the government and its allies, stop maintain the same old social structure, would the revolution has some hope of succeeding.

56. bsder ◴[] No.21198367{5}[source]
> I'm all for collective action, but I'm not sure if boycotts are reliable.

Boycott the Hearthstone streamers. Without the pros to tell the punters what the meta is and what cards to buy, the game dies out.

While Blizzard won't notice a couple people leaving, streamers will notice even a couple of people telling them they are leaving their channel.

57. PavlovsCat ◴[] No.21198715{4}[source]
> Because of this scarcity, everyone who feels strongly about a story feels that their story is being unfairly suppressed on HN

Writing something to graph the course of stories over time was just something I did for fun, then I noticed that stuff. And again, I'm talking about stories that are ranked lower (and that can mean much lower, several pages lower) than stories that have a lower score, are older, and have more comments.

This story has over 2300 points and is at #32 after 14 hours, would you say that's normal?

Seeing this for a few months now, I did kinda pull back from other threads, at least from long comments on trivial subjects. I don't feel okay, at all, discussing harmless things while important things that intersect with the responsibility of the tech aren't able to be discussed freely. If you then read that as caring so strongly about China [sic], that doesn't mean I just dreamed all that. Or that I do care so much, for that matter: I just dig into things, swiftly and as thoroughly as I can, I've done this with dozens if not hundreds of subjects, and being German this is right up an alley which is way bigger and way more important than even the CCP, from my perspective.

It's not that other don't seem to get flagged by users, too. But for months, it was like clockwork when it came to the CCP. Whenever I saw something gain traction, I paid attention, and without fail, it sank.

> HN is a site for intellectual curiosity

And new software point releases, neat little CSS tricks, anything to do with money and making money, and so on. Including human rights, and the intersection with tech and/or games.

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58. dang ◴[] No.21199248{5}[source]
Sure, all those things intersect with intellectual curiosity, as well as writing advice and the life of Lord Byron and the Nobel prize in physics and lots of other topics that appeared on HN today. What isn't so good for intellectual curiosity is hammering on the same hot stories over and over again. One of our jobs as moderators is literally to moderate that, i.e. make it not so excessive.

It's human nature, or at least internet nature, that hot controversies and sensational stories get lots of upvotes relative to everything else. If you want to have a site for intellectual curiosity, you need a countervailing mechanism against that, or such stories will dominate the front page entirely. On HN, there are a number of such countervailing mechanisms—user flags, moderation downweights, and software penalties. When you see a story that seems like it has a low rank relative to its points, one or more of those is the reason why.

The Blizzard story was the top item on HN for its day (https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2019-10-08), so I don't think it was underrepresented. Moderators gave it the standard downweight for indignation that all such stories get, which didn't reduce its rank much. Once it had been on the front page for 15 hours, software added an additional standard downweight. That helps flush yesterday's major stories off the front page so that the next crop of stories can come up.