dang explains moderating HN

Mar 22, 2023
Hi <>,

Thanks for the heads-up! I posted a scolding here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35265176. That account has gone below the karma threshold that will cause its comments to be autokilled—sort of an automated ban—so it's a bit of a moot point now.

We don't moderate accounts for being wrong. The community has to sort this out, for a bunch of reasons. One is that we're not qualified to identify wrongness—we don't have a truth meter. But also, if we use hard power to get rid of false comments, it breeds resentment and gives people a reason to believe that something sinister is happening. It even confers legitimacy on the thing being suppressed—a sort of "it must be true, otherwise why would they have to suppress it" boomerang effect. The healthiest solution, in the long run, is for the community to respond to bad comments and incorrect information with good comments and correct information.

We've always operated HN on the assumption that readers are smart enough to make up their own minds; I doubt that anyone is going to be licking lead as a result of a crank posting weird comments. It's also sort of morbidly fascinating—what a weird thing to have an agenda about! But the fascination effect only lasts a little while; if this account keeps it up we would ban them for repetitively stoking flamewars (but not for being wrong about lead-licking, if you see what I mean).

Thanks for watching out for the quality of HN—we rely on users to bring things like this to our attention, and I greatly appreciate it.

Daniel (dang)


On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 3:49 AM <> wrote:

    Mods,

    Weneedlead is promoting eating lead as a nutrient and making spurious claims that its not harmful. The flag option is not available.

    Anyone that believes this can potentially harm themselves as a result of this. While most adults are aware of the toxic dangers of heavy metals, children and teens are not.

    I've included an excerpt below. I seriously don't understand why this cannot be flagged, its malevolent and harmful in multiple ways intended to gaslight, this type of content has no business being on HN:



    Weneedlead 2 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

    I licked lead in front of people. It's a nutrient, it gets used by the body. Most people are critically malnourished, so it holds on to any that it can get.

    Nobody asked a much more important question: where did it come from? It's an element, people didn't make it. Why is it in coal, oil, sediments, neanderthal teeth even?

    reply


    versteegen 2 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

    This is nonsense.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3485653/ says

    > There is no such level of lead that appears to be necessary or beneficial to the body and no “safe” level of exposure to lead has been found.

    https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/lead-poison... says

    > There is no level of exposure to lead that is known to be without harmful effects.

    > The body stores lead in the teeth and bones, where it accumulates over time. Lead stored in bone may be released into the blood during pregnancy, thus exposing the fetus. Undernourished children are more susceptible to lead because their bodies absorb more lead if other nutrients, such as calcium or iron, are lacking.

    reply





    Weneedlead 2 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

    It's a lie. The effects are always beneficial except in extreme doses. No dose that makes no difference is exactly what you would expect from a nutrient.

    Lead activates the proteins it supoosedly poisons: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12425341_Inorganic_...

    Yes, teeth and bones use most of the lead that you consume. But why is there lead in the teeth of neandethals? https://www.mountsinai.org/about/newsroom/2018/250000-year-o...

    Yes, iron overload seems to interfere with lead. Calcium not so much, it seems it rather makes lead used for building more bone. Licking lead causes cravings for calcium rich food.

    reply