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The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)
Can a human touch make Silicon Valley’s biggest discussion forum a more thoughtful place?
A recent comment thread about a Times article, “YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views,” yielded a response likening journalism and propaganda; a muddled juxtaposition of pornography and Holocaust denial; a vague side conversation about the average I.Q. Gackle, whose name is pronounced “Gack-lee” and who declined to share his age, is a muscular, bald, and loquacious father of two and a devoted fan of the Canadian sketch-comedy show “The Kids in the Hall.” Bell, who is thirty-four, is willowy and soft-spoken, with closely buzzed hair and tattoos that peek out from beneath his cardigans. The most ideologically motivated or extreme posts and comments on Hacker News—an interview piece from Quillette titled “Understanding Victimhood Culture”; a link to a video of James Damore and Jordan Peterson in conversation; one user telling another that all Jewish people should relocate to Israel—tend to get flagged by the community or the site’s anti-abuse systems, many of which Bell and Gackle have written themselves.
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