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ICJ orders Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza, stops short of ordering ceasefire

(apnews.com)
517 points xbar | 2 comments | 26 Jan 24 14:35 UTC | HN request time: 0.446s | source
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ken47 ◴[26 Jan 24 23:02 UTC] No.39150013[source]▶
I wish politics articles wouldn't make it to the top page of Hacker News. There's already enough political discussion in a million other places.
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dang ◴[26 Jan 24 23:12 UTC] No.39150142[source]▶
Yes, and we won't let HN turn into a current affairs site, but this site has always had a certain amount of political content, and that's why this particular thread is happening. For more information, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39146184 and the links there.
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theultdev ◴[26 Jan 24 23:57 UTC] No.39150606[source]▶
Is there a reason why Oct 7th (the massacre that started this escalation) was not discussed?

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1696896000&dateRange=custom&...

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dang ◴[27 Jan 24 00:23 UTC] No.39150839[source]▶
I haven't gone back to check this, but I assume users flagged the posts and moderators didn't turn off the flags.

We only turn off flags when it seems like there's some basis and at least some chance for a reflective, substantive discussion. That isn't possible in the immediate aftermath of a shocking event like the atrocities of Oct 7—the reactions are necessarily going to be reflexive rather than reflective; completely understandably so—but the odds of any thoughtful conversation in that state of shock are basically zero.

Not that this thread or the related ones have been anything close to what I would wish for on HN, in terms of thoughtful conversation, but unfortunately we don't have the ability to make that happen, and not discussing the topic at all seems out of the question as well, so here we are with no good position and no solution.

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1. theultdev ◴[27 Jan 24 00:26 UTC] No.39150874[source]▶
I understand, could you please check it and report what you find?

But as I understand you, it's left to the moderator's discretion to unflag topics.

Is there a checklist / criteria of judging whether the users can have a "reflective" or "reflexive" political discussion?

Would 9/11 not be covered because it would be too "reflexive"?

Why was this discussion of this "genocide" viewed as not too "reflexive"?

You have to see how it looks very one-sided. It would be nice for political discussion topic allowance details to be explained.

Currently it leaves a lot of assumptions as you point out.

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2. dang ◴[27 Jan 24 00:57 UTC] No.39151145[source]▶
Ok, I checked and the only moderator intervention I found was that we prevented flags from killing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37800508. That's not the same thing as turning the flags off, but it prevented the story from being marked [flagged][dead] instead of [flagged].

> Would 9/11 not be covered because it would be too "reflexive"?

Probably? I'd prefer not to discuss counterfactuals because it's impossible to know.

I've explained at length on many occasions how we approach the question of which political topics to allow or turn off flags on - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

I know it's unsatisfying, but moderation of these things is never going to be (and certainly never going to feel) completely consistent. We try our best, but it's not possible, and especially not in hindsight, because moderation is guesswork.