Can we have a 30 day moratorium on Musk/Twitter posts?

It's a case of a MOT (major ongoing topic) a la Snowden in 2013. I know it's annoying.

We don't want to suppress the topic altogether because when significant new information (SNI) does appear, it's important to have a thread about it—and if we don't, there will be a user rebellion in the other direction ("I can't believe this isn't on HN, I guess it's not a news site any more").

(Also, it isn't possible to suppress a topic altogether - users will just work around whatever automated restrictions we put in, and manual restrictions are inevitably partial.)

The solution is to allow the submissions that contain SNI and to downweight the ones that don't. By downweight I mean that users can flag the posts, and mods can penalize them.

This solution is imperfect because when there are so many raindrops coming in, we can't dodge them all - but at least the worst copycat/followup posts, the ones that just repeat what has been said elsewhere, shouldn't stay on the front page for too long.

More explanation here, with links to additional past explanations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33509084.

Twitter is a major social media platform. It not only affects social media users, it also shapes our politics and our society, like it or not (I don't).

The current shitshow may be tiresome to read about, and I'm just as sick of the new boss as anybody, but it's definitely important news, and it's definitely tech-related.

Sorry you have to live in this timeline. I'm sorry any of us have to live here.

Saw this mentioned earlier today. They are rightfully being downweighted as long as they don't actually contain anything materially new:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33507986#33509084

Yes. Or at least some sort of limit on the number of stories in one day. Both sides of it are annoying. There's a reason they say 'theres no such thing as bad press'

Huh? I see one article about Twitter on the front page right now and one article that might be tangentially related. New is getting spammed with that stuff but not a lot is floating to the top. It’s like that quote from the movie The China Syndrome: “the system worked”

That's what the upvotes are for. I don't think obvious tech news should be blocked when you have the option to skip it or just go to one of the several sites that only show the top X HN posts. Censoring stuff never helps.

I think what I would rather see is a new top level tab like ask and show for political/pop culture/"non curious" articles.

There are some types of threads that are interesting, but ultimately hazardous to HN and curiosity destroying.

I would guess that runs the risk of attracting the wrong type of commenters (often like myself) and that bleeding into the front page. It also creates a categorization problem and increased moderator work.

Ironically, this is the only article about musk/twitter on the front-page for me.

Flag the ones that violate guidelines (isn't intellectually gratifying). There's no downvote button on articles for a reason.

Only if we can stop the Rust advocacy for 120 days.

It has consumed every website. On Reddit, it is the same thing. One way could be like Reddit mega threads. It shows the current event, and it compiles every post into a list without consuming every slot at the top. The problem is that it requires moderation and somebody needs to collect them.

Yes, please. My god.

Why? Open discussion is exactly at the heart of the supposed "free speech" argument.

I'd like to on the one hand...but I don't want moratoriums and people deciding they know what's best for the group to be a thing...so, no.

There was an user a couple of days ago who linked a method to hide threads about Musk on HN.

Does anybody have the link?

I am on mobile but I am sure it will pop

Hackers are all about separating the signal from the noise.

This OP isn't even close; no signal, all noise.

This guy seems to be as exhausting as the last U.S. president, I guess.