Dang, that is not a stringent test any of kind. It is highly arbitrary. It is a list of your previous decisions on whether a post is new information—most of which are simply declarations of your decision and provide no stringent rules to test.

It also doesn’t explain why the previous topic was locked and deleted. This new information had just been broken and not posted here before with the specific story coverage on Zuckerberg’s election interference comments. All that had been posted before was the raw audio leak/transcripts but not real journalism coverage of the significance like techcrunch. Theverge literally had one sentence of journalistic coverage on this: “In language that is often more candid than he typically uses in his public comments, Zuckerberg seeks to rally the company against Facebook’s competitors, critics, and the US government.”

And because it’s in every readers interest to be informed why certain actions are taken, I have no option but to show the community the rest of the conversation here which I don’t see you giving any attention to in your post (which is concerning).

https://web.archive.org/web/20191002162442/https://news.ycom...

https://web.archive.org/web/20191002162822/https://news.ycom...

>rollingdeep: Article is opinionated as many on HN but represents an important current news story to discuss. By all means the source can be substituted for a less opinionated one if an alternative source of similar coverage exists (I did not find any at the time). I have not found a negative comment that does not misquote the article, nor is anyone able to reply with correct info or bring more substance in response such as the disturbing history of antitrust lawsuits funded by Microsoft that surpass even the funding by the government.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21133244

>dang: This seems to me to be political back-and-forth of the moment and therefore off topic by the site guidelines. Sorry; I understand that interpretations of these things can differ.

Daniel (moderator)

>rollingdeep: So you are saying you would not have allowed the coverage of the Microsoft antitrust suits at the time on HN (if HN existed in the 1990’s and early 2000’s)? If find that difficult to believe.

>dang: I'm not saying that. What antitrust suit is happening right now? I was under the impression that there isn't one yet; just political sniping between advocates for either side of one which may or may not happen.

Daniel

>rollingdeep: Google and Facebook are currently being investigated by by 50 attorney generals (of 50 U.S. states) in an antitrust probe. That is more than political sniping. These new comments by Zuckerberg are a direct result of this regulatory action that is already in motion, which would obviously come under even closer scrutiny under a Warren presidency (she is the current leading candidate in the U.S. polls). The story here is:

1: Zuckerberg openly talks about funding a major legal battle that would very likely outsize any normal regulatory budgets (that are more or less fixed in size) to enforce U.S. antitrust regulations—similar to how Microsoft was able to escape regulatory interventions by funding a legal war of attrition against the U.S. government, even though the anticompetitive behavior was well known and evident.

2: Zuckerberg talks about not being able to control election influences in the face of a breakup. This is rather odd considering that he testified that nefarious election influence via facebook was not a serious threat. It implies there is power to influence elections and there are implications suggesting FB may use this power for their own purposes or as a bargaining chip in regulatory actions.

Again, this is more than political sniping.

>dang: When said antitrust probe generates significant new information, that will be on topic on HN and get lots of discussion. Articles about what candidates say during election campaigns, not so much. If we're to treat all those as on topic, there won't be room for anything else.

Warren said some stuff; Zuckerberg said some stuff; Warren said some more stuff. Politicians and CEOs say lots of things. I don't think that meets the bar for significant new information, and I'm pretty sure the bulk of the HN community would agree, which explains why the submission got flagged.

Daniel

>rollingdeep: Again, I find that very difficult to believe Daniel. If you feel so strongly that your are correct, please explain this time how this news not significant new information. You can’t just declare that and not present evidence of your declaration. I just summed up what was significant in what was said by Zuckerberg beyond any “back and forth” and you completely ignored that and hand waved it away without directly addressing any of the significance of that content.

You also appear to be appealing to whatever users would like to flag this news beyond it not being newsworthy. Just because there are users that dislike any negative news about FB whether it is newsworthy or not, does not prove a topic was appropriately flagged for being too political. I’m afraid your logic does not add up.

Please do a solid and present a comment from the discussion that you believe accurately articulates how this news is not at all significant, how there is not enough HN appropriate content (again, Microsoft would have been no different), and does not misquote or hand wave away the opposing points presented.

I’m confident you can’t present any such comment because they don’t exist—because they fail to meet a stringent set of stipulations and actual scrutiny. To be honest I feel your decisions here are not meeting any stringent standards of enforcing HN policy. This enforcement feels rather arbitrary.