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Oh no! They might block US tech companies from doing business in China unless they comply with draconian authoritarianism. Everyone in tech knows China has been completely outrageous in its treatment of US companies for decades.
If they removed US access to Chinese supply chains, it'd be a pretty big deal for the US... that might even start a war.
Economic Mutually Assured Destruction?
Hardly. Mutually Assured Damage, with the US clearly coming out on top. There are plenty of other places to make cheap goods, even disregarding increasing automation. There are not as many places to sell cheap goods by the trillions.
In the long term, it isn't even necessarily damage. Chinese manufacturing won't be cheap forever; wages are already too high there for them to continue sorting through and recycling the US's plastic. Rebooting US manufacturing earlier rather than later will make the transition to "expensive China" less of a jolt.
Moving manufacturing out of China is not synonymous with moving manufacturing into the US. A great deal of that manufacturing would move to other countries with cheap labor and burgeoning supply chains.
I wouldn't underestimate the quality of the supply chains in China. They've had decades of development and experience, and starting elsewhere could not be done without significant setbacks.
China's a great place to make something cheap that doesn't last very long.
It's not a great place to make something that needs to last.
It's an even worse place to make something that needs to meet quality standards, since you spend as much or more on QA than you saved by moving manufacturing to China.
China makes things as good or bad as the client wants. My 12 yr old laptop was made in China.
Oh certainly. That’s what I meant by mutually assured damage. It wouldn’t be painless for either side. But I’d make the argument that it’s far more harmful to China.
The US was in a much better position when they ceased to be the industrial center of the world. Then again, we’ve never seen a nation like China.
Some low-end production had already been moving to places like Vietnam, based on labor costs where Chinese labor costs are now > places like Vietnam (and have been for a while). Trump's trade war has accelerated the trend.
Arguing the other way is that you have suppliers for, say in electronics, literally everything in places like Guangdong. So that's a disincentive to move.
In Africa we have started to speak of China as the modern age colonizers. They are appearing everywhere, building roads, airports, dams and coal fired power stations. They bring all their equipment. We have challenges with governance (understatement). In my home country we have severe power shortages, daily power cuts lasting up 18 hours. Chinese are building a power station. So picture the day we try assert some right and China just switches off the power. This kind of scenario is playing itself out in Africa and I fear by the time we wake up China will own the continent. I exaggerate but I think you get my point.
s/we have/some of us, actually just a small minority on Twitter, have/
Twitter doesn't build power stations. Its pretty hard to miss the ground being cleared as the power station is being built.
Where I live, Hitachi build the power stations. So we all now also believe the Japanese are colonising Africa?
Outside of Twitter 'building complex machines for a fee != colonisation'.
If I was a Chinese strategist, I would announce a root and branch re-certification of the 737-MAX (in Chinese of course) as a completely new type.
Especially have just buttered up Airbus with 300 A320 orders in March. And even more so if I was convinced the C919 will certify in 2021.
There also aren't many places to sell aircraft by the hundreds.
Many companies have already moved or are moving to India, Malaysia, etc. Apple is already manufacturing some models of iPhones in India.
The India move is a strategic move probably to see if they can get the same quality from their assembly lines. The key is still access to supply chains for important semi conductor metals.
For Apple, that's only due to requirements / tariff impositions by India making it cheaper to manufacture locally.
You have to analyze the costs & benefits to all relevant parties when thinking about that sort of thing. I think you've only analyzed the costs to one party in that analysis.
"Cutting off all US supply chain in China" is on the table, but definitely way down the list of what China wants to do. The US decoupling from their economy isn't their big winning play, it's a nightmare scenario for them. If it was a big winning play right now for them, they'd already have done it.
Bringing (automated) manufacturing back to the US and ensuring the security of our supply chains while also doing economic harm to an authoritarian government while they're in a precariously unstable economic situation? As a US citizen, I'm fully onboard. Call China's bluff. Monetary policy (cheap money) is in a phenomenal place to support the necessary infrastructure investments (roads, rail, energy, etc), and that spending will keep the US economy humming while further decoupling us from China's.
What good are values as a nation if we're willing to trade them for profits and cheap goods from China?
Well said.
Thank you, I appreciate it.
Are you kidding? US foreign policy regularly ignores "values" for other interests.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Communiqu%C3%A9s
That's begging the question in an important sense though; what is under discussion is precisely a history of ignoring "values" for our other interests in China, the result that has created which did not match the stated goal of the previous policy, and the question of whether we should continue with that previous policy.
It would be a particularly perverse deployment of "whataboutism" if one argues that honoring our values over profit is not something we should do now, because whatabout the fact up until quite recently we weren't?
You don't even have to go until "quite recently," we can demonstratively saying we're--today, tomorrow, and for the foreseeable future-- aiding the yemeni genocide. "Whataboutism," is a complete spook that, oddly enough, details conversations because OP is likely not pointing out that we should ignore our values, but rather that the USA has no values to honor in the first place.
True, but the U.S. has hardly any official values.
The manufacturing won't come back it'd move to other Asian countries like Vietnam first.
It's ok for that manufacturing to go elsewhere, it's still a huge win for the US in the case in which the conflict with China continues to worsen (likely). It's the ideal approach to dealing with them: drain their economy of its manufacturing & exports and incubate a dollar-caused stagnation as they're unable to transact at the required scale with the rest of the global economy without a massive, endless supply of dollars (the Yuan has a trivial share of global foreign trade). They're already starting to suffocate under the lack of dollars right now, as their current account balance is shifting permanently negative. I'd expect them to begin increasingly restricting their citizens from foreign tourism, as it's a sizable source of dollar bleed, it's a luxury they can't afford much longer. They'll do it under the guise of the need to reinvigorate the Chinese spirit at home and to stop importing negative foreign incorrect values (some party b.s. like that).
It's perfectly fine to redirect all US->China manufacturing into other nations such as Vietnam. Not only is that great for helping other nations develop (many of which are regional competitors of China, so it's further ideal that those nations become stronger vis-a-vis China), it reduces China's position of strength.
To be the advocate for devil, US salary is too high and regulation/labour too tight, protests too many.
In other words, not 'business friendly'.
I disagree. Wages have stagnated for decades. Regulation too lax, especially with regard to predatory financial practices and environmental damage. Protests, too few.
The US is the most business friendly developed nation ever to exist. It is a corporate welfare state built upon the exploitation of the laborers.
That's a very limited concept of 'business friendly' and inaccurate in any case with regards to the US.
And yet you promote Tesla, cozying up to the CCP and telling us that "China is the future" so that he can build some cheaper cars and get around tariffs? Whatever helps "the mission"?
https://www.wraltechwire.com/2019/09/02/teslas-elon-musk-i-r...
The US decoupling her economy from China isn't the nightmare scenario, it's losing her global prestige. Imagine all of our allies suddenly realizing that the US is in an untenable bargaining position and all tariffs are raised all over the world, all at once. That's the nightmare scenario.
Trump's a dealmaker, he's shown himself to be less than utterly stupid in regards to foreign policy. But building a coalition against China might be more than he can handle.
"Cutting off all US supply chain in China" is on the table, but definitely way down the list of what China wants to do.
Exactly. It's one thing for China cut off the supply of microchips to the United States. The U.S. would have to make a massive investment in building new supply chains domestically and with other countries.
It's another thing if the United States cuts China off from $6 billion in soybeans each year. China's population will start to starve long before a microchip shortage really hurts the U.S.
Do you really believe China depends on US soy to feed their population? Where did you get that from?
they use it for pig feed and it's use as a component in many food products. I don't think they technically depend on it, but they depend on it and have to import huge amounts. If they didn't, they'd either have to make a domestic source (they have had trouble with this) or switch to other protein sources.
Or buy them from Brazil. Like they are now since the tariffs happened.
Or buy them from Brazil. Like they are now since the tariffs happened.
It's not a question of switching to Brazil. China was already buying from Brazil. But Brazil doesn't have the capacity to make up for a cut-off of American supplies.
Further, soybeans are seasonal. The reason that China buys from both the U.S. and Brazil is because they have harvests at opposite times of the year. Even if Brazil managed to magically ramp up to fill 100% of China's need in each Brazilian growing season, what is it going to do the other six months of the year?
Many of the pigs are dead thanx to ASF, so they won't be needing huge amounts this year. Also, they have rented vast amounts of land in Ukraine, Africa.
Trump wants a trade agreement with the EU for soy and beef in exchange for not imposing tariffs on cars. It probably won't happen, as the EU is too slow to act and most likely won't accept hormone treated beef.
China has already stopped importing large amounts of US agricultural products, including soybeans. The US gov is now subsidizing farmers to make up for this loss to the tune of $28 bil in direct payments to US farmers so far...
I don't really understand why people think most large nations can't feed their own people. China can easily do so, albeit with some changes to their diet. China is the top producers in the world of many crops: wheat, rice, potatoes, grapes, apples, tomatoes, watermelons, hogs, sheep, etc. and #2 or #3 in many others: corn, bananas, beef, chicken, milk, etc. Sure they import a huge amount of food as well. But so does the USA.
Soy is primarily used for pig feed. Brazil is razing forest to fill demand in coming years. US isn't going to starve China which is nominally food secure, as in no one is going to starve because of it. It has potential to make people pissed, current raising pork prices due to disease is already causing strife. It's also somewhat opportune timing however, China wouldn't have the soy card to squeeze Trumps farmers base if disease didn't dramatically reduce demand for soy.
Also China depends on US for IC (and airplane engines).
it would be bad for a while but the consequences in the long term would be all positive for the US. Hope that happens.
Removing US access to Chinese supply chains would just accelerate the transition to non-Chinese suppliers...for US and non-US companies.
It would also effectively damn China to being a permanent outsider with respect to manufacturing for the next several decades.
The first priority for China is keeping unemployment low to avoid internal conflict.
Ironically, this could potentially help Trump due to the fact that some manufacturers might say "Screw this noise", and attempt to use more US based sources in order to avoid more trade uncertainty.
It would be a lot worse for China.
Seems like an empty threat to me. How much of China's economy depends on the US? The US is China's number 1 trading partner and accounts for about 20% of their exports. It would also be a hit to the US, but finding cheap labor isn't that hard and there's existing momentum of labor markets moving out of China.
As far as I can tell, this hurts China more than it hurts the US (though clearly it hurts the US). It is just a matter of who's going to backdown first. Who calls the bluff? Who is more risk adverse?
All that would achieve is the acceleration of moving away from Chinese supply chains.
it would be the best thing for the US if China made it hard to obtain their supplies (wth the exception of anything China has an exclusive source of).
Look at oil. The US was the first country to pump oil at scale. but over time it invested in other countries to develop their oil fields (few countries have the capital to bootstrap their own fields) and extracted strong pricing concessions through joint ownership of the fields and the processing facilities (The Prize, Daniel Yergin).
Eventually, it was just cheaper to buy oil from other countries while sitting on our own reserves (which will be worth more in the future if supplies start to dwindle).
However, eventually the oil market got complicated with multiple new players and the US rediscovered how profitable oil exports could be. When we wanted to, we had the capital and the expertise and the will to exploit US oil again (I am explicitly leaving all environmental concerns, short and long, out of this argument, although they are important both for oil and chip production).
once the US was an oil exporter again it forced all other players to adjust their game. It gave the US a lot more global negotiating power, it gave US more domestic supplies, it provided lots of very high paying jobs to oil workers (again, ignoring environmental externalities here).
Let's say china makes it hard for people to buy chips made in china. And the US decides in response to take all the free capital and tax incentives it has and turn large swaths of unused land into fabs and manufactories for high tech equipment. Remember, like oil, chips are something the US invented and it has a very deep bench when it comes to fab tech.
And China is terrified of this. They know we intentionally outsourced fab production for environmental and cost reasons and they know we can bring it back. They are already seeing how some large consumer electronics companies can pick up major components of their production pipelines and move them to other countries.
personally I think it would probably be a net negative for the US because (like oil) fabs have massive environmental externalities and we happily exported those problems to other countries. but it's an entirely plausible scenario that would just take a bit of changes from the current situation.
Microsoft does a lot of biz in China, they might be affected by this, though they have worked harder than most to maintain a good relationship with the government.
In the current environment, these "good relationships" don't matter much. They will be used as pawns in the larger scheme.
Maybe? I asked this question once at an all hands 5 or 6 years ago, and the answer I got was that the Chinese government liked having an example of a western company it had a good relationship with. Turning on even companies mostly friendly to it would be a very harsh precedent, though I wouldn’t put it past the CPC.
A lot changed in the last 6 years. China like no other country is rising and fast becoming a global power. It may not be a problem if they were a democracy or used unnecessary means to steal the IP of US companies.
I doubt that retaliation would be restricted to US tech companies.
I think they block US companies regardless of whether or not they’re willing to self censor. Facebook is one example
It could be massively disruptive to Apple, for example, if they chose to block production or sales.
Sure it could hurt China as well but that’s what happens in trade wars.
There's little doubt that the future paths of the democracies and China will resemble the cold war of the 60's and 70's. Can't we just spare the drama, cut to the chase, swap corporate prisoners and get on with stockpiling weapons already?
Hmm, what if we cut everything out except for the space race?
Considering the space race was abstractly, a push for strategic dominance of a physical domain newly enabled by technologies. I think it’s more likely this time around we will see a push into newly opened digital domains, e.g ml based cyber warfare.
Well, space is still out there though, and current tech is much better suited to dominate it than 60s tech. The first nation to figure out space mining and manufacturing will be light years ahead of any competitor
Let's just jump all the way to the end.
Someone needs to get a sledgehammer and go knock some holes in the Great Wall.
There's a pretty significant difference: China has way more untapped human capital than the Soviet Union. There's a good chance they end up with a level of economic development closer to South Korea or Japan than Eastern Europe. If that's the case, then it's like the Cold War, except it doesn't end in the economic collapse of the other side.
They have very serious demographical issues though.
Due to the one-child policy, china is headed for extreme economic issues -- even without interference. Those issues are already starting to become apparent and will skyrocket over the next decade or two. Extra economic pressure on top could definitely have a significant effect on the country.
Yet Nigeria, Yemen, Pakistan, etc. with practically uncontrolled population growth are on the cusp of a golden age?
It may not be a total loss for mankind if there's another space race.
Since everybody should be free to choose what to think and what to believe - why the European Union is watching and not doing the same as US? They should also to place top Chinese companies "on a blacklist over alleged human rights violations against Muslim minorities"...
Because the European Union lacks a spine and is too busy infighting among themselves.
Just remind you that Saudi Arabia the BFF of US is not respecting the human right of women, that is around 50% of the population if my math is right and women are human too.
Oh right I forgot the EU stands up to Saudi arabia
Because they want to reserve some ammo in case Trump puts a 25% tariff on all Mercedes and Audi's.
No Western government really cares about human rights unless it's opportune. Why doesn't anyone put Saudi Arabia on a blacklist for human rights violations?
Honestly they are rich and while they might be a disaster as a government they are firmly in our pocket.
The House of Saud figured out years ago that their position makes them very useful.
Sadly western governments barely care even if it is opportune
Canada has basically cut diplomatic ties with KSA (more like they cut ties with us after we criticized their human rights record). Good riddance and I was proud to see it.
But despite pretty good domestic production of your own, you guys still use the oil though. That's kind of the point.
Not only do you still use the Kingdom's oil, but even Kazakhstan, and Algeria's as well.
I see it the other way; it's telling that KSA didn't cut the oil off along with their other threats and actions because they realized it would only hurt them more than us. Just a pointless temper tantrum while they remain utterly dependent on foreign exports of their oil.
The lack of serious reaction over Jamal Khashoggi is sad and telling.
LOL. US is arguably the bigger foul than China to EU now. Airbus/German car manufactures are on the Trump's target list.
Realpolitik. You don't side with the dying empire against the rising one just because the old one would treat you better.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend” comes to mind. The EU needs to position itself so that it can make beneficial deals, both with the US and China.
Coincidentally, environmentalism would lead the EU to freeing itself from the shackles of the petrodollar. I’m all for that.
Because this posturing is purely about the self imposed trade war US is having with China.
One cannot seriously claim that Huawei selling an Android phone with Google Play on it would harm US national security, yet that is the official reason for banning it.
US didn’t care about this issue before they needed more reasons to ban more chinese companies. ”Trade war” as a straight reason would not go well, it’s likely even against WTO rules.
China has been violating WTO rules for decades and faces no repercussions within that framework.
IMO - the EU is a bit more calculated in their political/trade maneuvers, and does not start international confrontations with the same propensity the US does because multiple nations' economies are at stake in a union.
Also, the US political/trade situation is not entirely certain given elections in 1 year. The EU doesn't know how this is going to play out yet. It's an international poker game.
Because german carmakers that need somewhere to sell their old tech. In politics just like in crime, follow the money.
The world is not working that way. In terms of geopolitical interests, the EU doesn't align with the US well.
Sure, but then we would reasonably have to blacklist the US as well to be consistent (supporting the genocide in Yemen, putting kids in concentration camps, separating families from babies, rampant corruption, no rule of law, etc etc), and I don't think the EU would want to lose both those markets at once.
Would the US be doing what it's doing without Trump? During the 2016 election Trump's tough stance on China was widely seen as ignorant, unrealistic or a joke.
Forgot about talking with North Korea, as a new "West Korea" is forming under the leadership of Xi, who is painting himself as Mao.
Can somebody help me out here. I think the biggest issue on my mind for the coming election is the U.S. and China relations.
I don't see any candidate who seems to have an interest whatsoever in being tough on China, and more terrifying, could lead us during a time that something bad did happen.
Trump isn't the greatest, but he is the ONLY one I can see who I would trust would at least have the gall to stand up to China.
Andrew Yang is a Taiwanese-American. It will be very interesting if he comes on top in the months ahead.
I was an avid supporter of Yang, but I think he is a bit naive (Dr. Oz comments?) isn't a great speaker, and hasn't said anything much about China. UBI is the second most important issue on the docket, China is way further ahead.
What do you think?
How many hours of video content have you watched of Yang speaking? Genuinely curious. And what specifically you have watched making you think he's not a great speaker?
Toward the end of Yang being on Eric Weinstein's The Portal podcast they briefly talk about a solution regarding China. Yang definitely is aware, and he certainly understand the foundational principles of economics better than the other candidates based on what I have heard him speak of.
I'm in the same boat. Yang makes logical and simple-to-understand solutions to real problems we are facing. But at the same time, I just don't feel he's charismatic or inspiring enough. And I also find it weird he hasn't talked much about his stance on China. I really don't see any downside of declaring a tough stance on China as far as candidacy goes.
One thing I agree with him though, the top 3 dem candidates right now don't really stand a chance against Trump.
Sorry but I don't see how you can say that no candidate except Trump seems to have an interest in being tough on China. Most Democratic candidates have publicly stated that they would continue to work with China on global issues like climate change and the economy but that they would fight back unequivocally against human rights violations. At least a handful, including Sanders and Warren, have also extended that fight to censorship and labor practices.
I can help you out here:
"During a phone call with Xi on June 18, Trump raised Biden's political prospects as well as those of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who by then had started rising in the polls, according to two people familiar with the discussion. In that call, Trump also told Xi he would remain quiet on Hong Kong protests as trade talks progressed."
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/03/politics/trump-biden-call-xi-...
Tough guy ...
Really, it just became an issue in like the last couple of days. Given the pace of the modern news cycle, I'd expect to start seeing some policy trial balloons floated by next week.
Then it is working. Fear is the best thing to force people to adopt authoritarianism. This comment just illustrated fearmongering is working beautifully in the United States as well.
Perhaps this is true, but I would be terribly naive not to be afraid of what China is capable of doing, and the future of humanity if we don't take this issue seriously.
Given Trump's antics with Syria and his unwillingness to listen to military experts, I absolutely do not want Trump involved in the decision making process if the situation deteriorates with China. Regardless of what you think of his policies on immigration, trade and regulation, there is no way to see Trump as a competent commander in chief.
However, Trump is a good negotiator, as we've seen with North Korea. Yes, he strongarms, but that's the US for you. I'm skeptical--but not in denial--about the possibility that this is phase 1 of the subdue-China plan.
what was accomplished with N Korea?
He walked across the fucking border.
The outrage directed at China… that looks pretty authentic. It certainly isn’t what Wall Street wants. It certainly isn’t what the mainstream media wants as the talking point for the next election. I think they had decided on health insurance.
There’s no doubt that Trump is capitalizing on it and why wouldn’t he?
What makes you think this is fear-mongering? As in fake. The Hong Kong events, South Park, NBA, etc… this is as organic a shit storm as I’ve ever seen.
Pivot to Asia, TPP, quietly placing many restrictions on Chinese tech acquisitions to curtail China2025 ambitions well before Trump took office. Trump is playing up grievance politics to look like he's the only one standing up to China but undermining any real chance to successfully contain China by neglecting allies while reintroducing McCarthyism domestically and boosting Chinese nationalism and entrenching CPC support. People are eating the bait because they think China is bilateral problem. China is exploiting this, there's no united front against OBOR abroad and domestically the CPC can push through painful reforms that would have undermined their credibility by blaming the tradewar. That's reality TV foreign policy for you.
Biden has come out against the trade war.
“I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They’re not competition for us,” he added.
This has already caused irreparable damage to China. Companies are not going to depend on their services in the future and definitely be moving out. The impact will manifest over time.
What would happen if the US and EU are not made available to Chinese consumers at all? That is not an option now as most of the manufacturing happens there but if we assume this can be done and Chinese consumers don’t get anything made or owned by US and EU companies how big of a problem will it be for the Chinese government?
It's a messy breakup and both sides will be worse off. But these are both huge and advanced economies. Substitutes will be found or built.
I really don't get Bloomberg. They post articles with wild conspiratorial nonsense as fact, absolutely destroying their credibility, but then they make sure to tow the line with China on human rights violations being "alleged".
Shows you who their masters are.
Lol. Bring it on.
It’s surprising to think that in retrospect, relatively speaking, Hu, Jintao, was actually a good guy.
He’s of course one of a string of CCP strongmen, but nowhere near the likes of mr Xi. It’s too bad some within the party saw him as too soft maybe leaning western, so Xi manoeuvered and became the next mr Mao... to the detriment of China _and_ the world.
I dont think who the person in charge is matters that much. The conglomerate of powerfull people in china have allowed Xi to rise into power because he would serve their interests. Same when Hu was in power. In a mature political system, transition of interests and percieved optimal policy changes who the man in power is, not the other way around.
Your comment, but applied to all countries.
They’ve blacklisted our companies from working with them without a “Chinese partner” — of course, that just ends up being a vessel company for state-sponsored Chinese espionage.
If you want an idea of what China has been up to, check out this recent interview with a former CIA official [1 it’s right-wing OAN, get over it].
They “somehow” managed to learn the identities of every single CIA informant in their country their country. Some of them murdered as they left their homes.
1. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mqX_EESAdRY
Should the trade war escalate a bit too much, it will impact the cost of energy too. China has a rare earth minerals (think neodymium magnets used in motors and generators) yearly extraction rate 8 times higher than the US, and their extimated reserves are about 30 times bigger. They're #1 in the world in one of the most important elements industry, period. If this idiocy continues, it won't need to get to the military level to produce some serious damage.
Which American tech has the most to lose? FB and Goog completely unaffected. Microsoft could take a hit but would be fine since they're ubiquitous. Apple? What's their hardware situation look like?
My only hope is that we can extend this to biotech as well. The amount of IP theft and insane Chinese government subsidization of biotech that USA-based companies live off of is disturbing. They are so addicted to BS money and are so entrenched that these companies fear they can't back out. I say - Rip The Bandaid Off.
On HN, when there's a major story unfolding over time, we apply the "significant new information" test: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
The idea is to have a new thread for each development that adds significant new information, and to downweight follow-ups and copycat stories that don't. In this way we prevent the front page from being flooded with repetitive stories and discussions (often low-quality ragey discussions, the internet being what it is), while making space for substantive new content when it arises. We came up with this after the Snowden deluge of 2013, when HN's front page was inundated with a lot of articles that didn't make this distinction, and many users—even ones who found the underlying story interesting—complained.
If we apply this test here, it's clear that "China says ‘stay tuned’" does not count as significant new information. On HN there's no harm in waiting until the next important thing happens, and in the meantime we can turn our attention to other interesting things.
Does YC have any links to Chinese businesses they might want to disclose?
All I know comes from public reports, which is that YC was planning something in China at some point. I don't know what its status is.
Your question may to be coming from a mistaken place, though. Nothing like that would affect Hacker News moderation. HN has had editorial independence from YC for years [1, 2] and we don't think about such things while moderating. What we think about is how to keep the site in line with its values [3], and how the community feels about things.
1 https://venturebeat.com/2015/09/29/y-combinator-spins-out-ha...
2. https://blog.ycombinator.com/two-hn-announcements/
3. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Hey dang, hopefully you're already aware of this, but if not, I just wanted to let you know that a common tactic I've noticed that's increasingly being utilized is to mass flag a submission in order to quickly have it removed from the top of the page.
Since the algorithm automatically lowers the priority of highly flagged posts, and it requires some level of manual intervention in order to unflag a flagged post, it works quite well for selectively bringing down unwanted submissions.
One way of resolving this I think would be to additionally add a weight for the existing prioritization weight associated with the number of flags on a submission such that a post with an increasing amount of upvotes requires a proportionally higher number of flags to be deprioritized.
[e.g. maybe something like (number_of_flags / number_of_upvotes) * (time_decay_between_avg_interval_of_flags_per_unit_time_versus_upvotes_respectively)]
It's best if you email hn@ycombinator.com with specific links if you think submissions are being flagged inappropriately.
Since this subthread has turned into "ask the mods arbitrary things", I detached it from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21208169 and marked it off-topic.