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Hacker News Guidelines

(news.ycombinator.com)
446 points tonmoy | 2 comments | 24 Aug 23 16:25 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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ajonit ◴[24 Aug 23 17:06 UTC] No.37251548[source]▶
While you are there, go through dang’s comments timeline https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang

Moderating something like HN is a very hard job. Gratitude .

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bowsamic ◴[24 Aug 23 17:26 UTC] No.37251867[source]▶
I understand why but I don’t like how people are individually rate limited silently without their knowledge. It is certainly immoral

EDIT: unfortunately I cannot defend my point in the comments, as I am now rate limited :)

EDIT 2: /u/Dylan16807 yes I'm seeing that. When I try and post it says "you are posting too quickly, please slow down"

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sneak ◴[24 Aug 23 18:00 UTC] No.37252401[source]▶
I don't think it's immoral - it's their site, after all. Our being able to post here at all is a privilege afforded to us, and their choosing to revoke that privilege for any reason is fully within their rights. No cause or explanation is even required, though they are frequently provided out of the abundant courtesy that the moderators seem to have a natural talent for. If you think about it, even rate limiting is a slightly more courteous alternative to outright banning someone.

I think shadowbanning is a bit unethical as it technically involves lying, but afaik HN doesn't do such things.

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1. xdennis ◴[24 Aug 23 23:25 UTC] No.37255859[source]▶
> Our being able to post here at all is a privilege afforded to us, and their choosing to revoke that privilege for any reason is fully within their rights.

I really hate it when discourse about anything devolves into rights.

If I have a genius or terrible take like "Chairs are pointless. Nobody should use chairs because ..." you can't just say "Well actually The Constitution allows people to use chairs and you can't ban the private use of chairs." That doesn't bring anything to the discussion.

Nobody is saying here that HN isn't legally allowed to control the content on its website, but different people have different opinions about what's right and wrong for websites to do which doesn't involve having to bring the government in to settle things.

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2. shadowgovt ◴[25 Aug 23 15:45 UTC] No.37263015[source]▶
In this context, I think it's an appeal to the ethics of property rights over some other framework. It's an answer to the (undefended in the post) statement "[Rate limiting] is certainly immoral" by offering a framework in which it is not: "People run servers, and they host users on those servers. What is 'moral' on those servers is the will of the operator, and we are all guests. Morality extends to us the opportunity to freely leave at any time; it need not extend us more than that."

One can argue this framework is bad, but it is a framework under which one can consider the question of whether rate-limiting is immoral.

(I'd even go further to argue that "my property my rules unless the government has declared otherwise" is a default ethical framework for, at least, most Americans. Be it Disney World or my own hearth, there are a set of rules, written and unwritten, that those who do not co-own the property must abide while inhabiting the property or operating the property, and the owner may revoke the privilege of inhabitance or operation at, broadly, their discretion. Maybe "ownership makes right" isn't good enough for the specific context of "a user of a freely-provided authenticated public forum", but I think the burden is on the person holding that opinion to explain why we need a rule more restrictive than the default property-ownership-based 'my forum my rules').