Try submitting a URL from the following domains, and it will be automatically flagged (but you can't see it's flagged unless you log out):
- archive.is
- watcher.guru
- stacker.news
- zerohedge.com
- freebeacon.com
- thefederalist.com
- breitbart.comHacker News isn't an open-ended political site for people to post weird propaganda.
We probably banned it for submissions because we want original sources at the top level.
Plenty of both left- and right-wing sites are banned and/or downweighted on HN. When a site is primarily about political battle, we either ban it or downweight it. Which of the two we choose depends on how likely the site is to produce the occasional interesting article (in HN's sense of the word "interesting"). That's why The Federalist and World Workers Daily (or whatever it's called) are banned, while National Review and Jacobin are merely downweighted. Both the Guardian and Daily Beast are downweighted, btw, as are most major media sites.
If you or anyone thinks that HN moderation is unfairly ideologically biased, I'm open to the critique, but you guys need to first look at the site as it actually is, and not just look at your own pre-existing perceptions. Every data point becomes a Convincing Proof when you do the latter.
People think that when their team gets moderated, the mods are OMG obviously on the other side. The Other Side feels exactly the same way. This "they're against me" perception is the most reliable phenomenon I've observed on HN. Leftists feel it, rightists feel it, Go programmers feel it, even Rust programmers feel it. Literally the very-most-popular topic on HN at any moment is perceived by someone as Viciously Suppressed because of this perception. Stop and think about that—it's kind of amazing. Someone should write a PhD thesis.
Since when has moderation actions and relevant data been made available to the lay public here? We cannot look at the site as it actually is. We either have to trust you or pound sand.
>Stop and think about that—it's kind of amazing. Someone should write a PhD thesis about it.
Just because (you think) everyone feels persecuted doesn't mean you're doing a good job keeping things level. It's a common joke to make but it's just a joke. Similarly, if both a rampant nazi, and a fierce tankie hate you, that doesn't make you a bastion of democracy. "Fairness" doesn't mean pissing off everyone equally, and that is neither a necessary or sufficient condition.
These are just minor notes, don't take them too seriously
We don't publish a moderation log for reasons I've explained over the years- if you or anyone wants to know more, see the past explanations at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... and let me know if you still have questions.
Not publishing a mod log doesn't mean that we don't want to be transparent, it means that there's a tradeoff between transparency and other concerns. Our resolution of the tradeoff is to answer questions when we get asked. That's not absolute transparency but it's not nothing. Sometimes people say "well but why should we trust that", but they would say that about a moderation log as well.
Re your second paragraph: I agree! and I don't think I've claimed otherwise. In fact, the lazy centrist argument is a pet peeve (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).
It's true that the way I post about these things ("both sides hate us") gets mistaken for the obvious bad argument ("therefore we must be in the happy middle", or as Scott Thompson put it years ago, "we're the porridge that Goldilocks ate!"), but that's because the actual argument is harder to lay out and I'm not sure that anybody cares.