> Don't really know what you mean. I saw HK posts on the front page. Maybe you wish I had seen more ?

There's a lot of sinking articles going on. So it's not 100%, sure. But I'm not "wishing" anything, I am disagreeing with your explanation.

> If you believe downvoting and flagging is strictly censoring then no matter what can be said you'll always keep coming back to your narrative that HN is being gamed about HK.

That's kind of a non-sequitur. And I think HN is gamed about a lot of things, in a lot of directions. I bet "pro-China" articles also get flagged, some of them that might have been interesting.

> From the get-go your position is that HN is censoring things by design AND that it can and is actually being gamed to increase censorship.

Not from the get-go, after being on this site for over 6 years and running a script to check penalized stories on and off for a few weeks here and there.

> I don't think I moved any goal posts. You claim the front page is manipulated, I say it's unlikely and you reply I am wrong.

You specifically were talking about news junkies upvoting things dopamine outrage porn, and the good normal folk who only visit occasionally flagging these things. That's not compatible with stories with 5-10 flags getting sunk like a brick in 10-120 minutes, which I know I'm just claiming, but since it's in response to something you're also just claiming, that's fair enough.

> If you believe HN is being manipulated, collect raw data, do the analysis and submit it ? I am sure many people on HN would like to have a look. Also, you mail dang if you find anything substantial (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13727487).

I did (collect data) for a while, but I got sick of it. Pay me, and I'll do it, but not for free, to just get shat on whenever I bring it up.

Back in the Snowden days, some people had their flagging privileges revoked for flagging anything to do with Snowden. I guess those days are long gone, and dang saying "I didn't see anything" I don't trust at all. I'm not going to make a throwaway email address just because we can't talk openly here.

I have a simple solution, too, just make all flags public. Maybe even give a limited budget per month or whatever. One thing is sure, if HN wanted to crack down on abusing flags, it would, it doesn't need me for any of that.

> Somehow I hope the HN crowd knows how to get facts about events and doesn't rely on HN only for staying up-to-date with current events.

That I agree with very much. And I also agree with not wanting to make HN an everything/nothing site.

But it does pain me that people who consider themselves so well reasoned and moral in large parts ignore totalitarianism, and pretend that's protecting some kind of discussion culture. To me it's like throwing a planet into the sun, but being really protective about a little garden that is on that planet. As German, it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, to tell you the truth.

I'm also not a fan of this super anal interpretation of guidelines in some cases, completely ignoring them in others, depending on context, depending on what is fashionable or uncouth. A lot of wishy-washy rules, selectively enforced, that comes with a lot of pomp about being better than the rest of the web. Just like Hannah Arendt, I'm getting so sick and tired of spineless pseudo-intellectuals, and am beginning to appreciate normal people with the heart in the right place more and more.

https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/cy64mn/who_do_you...

You don't call HN, that's just a fact, HN is too busy building things that either distract people or make murder perfect, or a bunch of gimmicks inbetween. When some male techie dies, there's a black bar, when totalitarianism rears it's head and gets cocky, not a peep, unless we can somehow find a new and fascinating angle on it.

On me it has the opposite effect, the more discussion of these topics gets stifled, the less I want to partake in the discussion of harmless stuff.

And you know, getting downvoted for this within 6 minutes of posting, that says it all.. just more knee-jerk suppression, by someone who can't look in the eye of those they seek to silence, in a conversation they didn't partake in and can't even be arsed to actually read. Probably spotted this on "comments", didn't like it, "seemed like" something to them, down goes the vote.

Meanwhile, story #1 is "Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier", because that's important, that's interesting. We'll probably discuss soccer results sooner than the assualt on factual reality that totalitarianism undertakes.