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Real quiet in here on the comments, can’t figure out why he’s acting like this right?
Maybe because he’s attacking the country on behalf of some other world power
Just common sense
Sadly the other power here is turbotax/intuit :(
I was going to say, Intuit could simply have given/owe Musk a solid favor for this.
People give up on commenting on this stuff, since the threads are silenced and flagged very quickly.
Yup, they're permaflagged and HN knowingly lets them go by even though they could do differently. Case in point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43208973. Seems exceedingly likely that this one too would've gotten auto-perma-flagged, but then a button was pushed to undo this as a one-off that is not applied to all these other cases. Of course @dang is free to prove us wrong and explain the discrepancy.
As I said in my sibling comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43227619), this stuff has been by far the most-discussed on HN in recent weeks. Nothing else comes close.
I I listed 49 threads in that post. If we throw in the thread you mention (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43208973), that's 50 threads with over 30k comments.
That's an underestimate though, since the list is far from comprehensive. Let's conservatively bump the number up to 40k comments. That's over 1000 comments a day and well over 10% of the total comments that have been posted to HN during this period.
From my perspective that's not the same as "letting it go by".
Hmm, that's interesting dang. I'm almost never seeing any 'muskdogeness' posts (nice name !) on the first page. I'm looking at new posts, with showdead = True.
Would you have a stat on all those posts, if they were flagged at some point, and then un-flagged later ?
You can also look at https://news.ycombinator.com/active
and note that
GSA Eliminates 18F (nextgov.com) 471 points by patcon 15 hours ago | flag | 412 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43221549
is an much earlier version of this submissions story .. and still actively being commented upon.
What's the 'active' page ? Wasn't aware of it.
'Active' with respect to comment churn.
Might not be the front page but it's where all the comment turnover is happening.
In many ways the opposite of well paced deeply considered exchanges.
It's on the /lists page that's linked in every HN footer: https://news.ycombinator.com/lists.
I looked at the frontpage time of those 50 threads and it adds up to almost exactly 300 hours on the front page. That's a lot of hours.
But it was over a total time span of 900 hours, so still pretty easy to miss all 50 threads. This is the way the HN frontpage works: no one sees everything that makes the front page (not even us), and it's entirely possible to miss the largest threads and most-discussed topics.
For example, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43208973 is by now the second-largest thread in HN's history and spent 16 hours on the front page, but there are still going to be thousands of regular HN readers who never saw it, and some of those will probably feel angry about that and say that it has been "silenced" and "censored" and so on. That's the way this works.
Ultimately, it works that way because of fundamentals, meaning there's not much we can do about it. The solution is not to have 100 threads with 80k comments on the frontpage for 600 hours, instead of 50 threads with 40k comments for 300 hours, even though that's probably what most people who feel frustrated probably think they want. Rather the solution is to articulate the principles by which HN operates, and keep sticking to those principles over time.
I've been posting a ton about that in recent weeks, although (by the same dynamic I just described!) many readers won't yet have seen any of those posts. Here are two entry points:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43130700
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011
I call this the "nobody goes there anymore it's too crowded" theory of HN threads: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
"This stuff" is by far the most-discussed stuff on HN in the last couple months. Nothing else comes close.
Below, I've pasted a partial list. That's restricted to just muskdogeness and only the biggest threads. There are 25,000 comments in those threads alone.
How this translates into "the threads are silenced" and "people give up on commenting" is left as an exercise to the reader.
---
The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43227180 - March 2025 (164 comments)
A Letter to the American People - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43224350 - March 2025 (440 comments)
GSA Eliminates 18F - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43221549 - March 2025 (373 comments)
A DOGE staffer appears to be posting DOGE work on his public GitHub - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43217947 - March 2025 (348 comments)
US Forest Service firings decimate already understaffed agency - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43193366 - Feb 2025 (128 comments)
FDA meeting to pick next winter's flu shot is canceled, in ominous sign for US - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43189999 - Feb 2025 (120 comments)
DOGE will use AI to assess the responses of federal workers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43171265 - Feb 2025 (185 comments)
Disclosure of personal information to DOGE “is irreparable harm,” judge rules - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43167579 - Feb 2025 (150 comments)
Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43166830 - Feb 2025 (547 comments)
Trump will kill CHIPS Act by gutting NIST employees - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43152470 - Feb 2025 (113 comments)
It is no longer safe to move our governments and societies to US clouds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43150085 - Feb 2025 (799 comments)
Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43139172 - Feb 2025 (295 comments)
DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43138238 - Feb 2025 (1457 comments)
SpaceX engineers brought on at FAA after probationary employees were fired - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43127819 - Feb 2025 (133 comments)
Every .gov Domain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43125829 - Feb 2025 (265 comments)
Treasury agrees to block DOGE's access to personal taxpayer data at IRS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43121306 - Feb 2025 (170 comments)
DOGE puts $1 spending limit on government employee credit cards - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43120231 - Feb 2025 (692 comments)
DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43112084 - Feb 2025 (1668 comments)
Doge Claimed It Saved $8B in One Contract. It Was $8M - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43101757 - Feb 2025 (124 comments)
A SpaceX team is being brought in to overhaul FAA's air traffic control system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43101009 - Feb 2025 (146 comments)
"Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43098705 - Feb 2025 (1279 comments)
USDA fired officials working on bird flu, now trying to rehire them - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43097709 - Feb 2025 (179 comments)
US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43066182 - Feb 2025 (789 comments)
Are DOGE's Claims of Social Security Payments to 150-Year-Olds Way Off Base? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43056993 - Feb 2025 (108 comments)
Anyone can push updates to the doge.gov website - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43045835 - Feb 2025 (1124 comments)
USAID funding freeze disrupts global tuberculosis control efforts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43038727 - Feb 2025 (119 comments)
DOGE Has Started Gutting a Key US Technology Agency - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43037426 - Feb 2025 (180 comments)
DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43036042 - Feb 2025 (285 comments)
DOGE as a National Cyberattack - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43035977 - Feb 2025 (211 comments)
NOAA's public weather data powers the local forecasts on your phone and TV - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43018643 - Feb 2025 (113 comments)
Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42981756 - Feb 2025 (1801 comments)
Announcing the data.gov archive - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42970039 - Feb 2025 (132 comments)
Elon Musk's Demolition Crew - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42968430 - Feb 2025 (345 comments)
DOGE staffer resigns over racist posts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42966412 - Feb 2025 (105 comments)
DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42951458 - Feb 2025 (381 comments)
20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42950790 - Feb 2025 (548 comments)
What's happening inside the NIH and NSF - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42940257 - Feb 2025 (1536 comments)
Onlookers freak out as 25-year-old set loose on Treasury computer system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42936421 - Feb 2025 (133 comments)
Payments crisis of 2025: Not “read only” access anymore - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42933219 - Feb 2025 (654 comments)
Words flagged in search of current NSF awards - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42932760 - Feb 2025 (155 comments)
The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42910910 - Feb 2025 (2990 comments)
CDC: Unpublished manuscripts mentioning certain topics must be pulled or revised - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42905937 - Feb 2025 (721 comments)
CDC data are disappearing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42897696 - Feb 2025 (589 comments)
Musk aides lock government workers out of computer systems at US agency - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42892278 - Jan 2025 (125 comments)
NSF starts vetting all grants to comply with executive orders - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42886661 - Jan 2025 (488 comments)
Archivists work to save disappearing data.gov datasets - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42881367 - Jan 2025 (238 comments)
US pauses all federal aid and grants - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42851248 - Jan 2025 (485 comments)
'Never seen anything like this' – NIH meetings and travel halted abruptly - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42817910 - Jan 2025 (111 comments)
NIH hit with freezes on meetings, travel, communications, and hiring - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42798960 - Jan 2025 (440 comments)
It's quiet in here because there's active discussion in other threads:
GSA Eliminates 18F - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43221549 - March 2025 (373 comments)
A Letter to the American People - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43224350 - March 2025 (440 comments)
He's acting like this because he campaigned on "government bad". Not any specific bit of it: all of it.
It is often theorized that he's doing this on behalf of some foreign power. That seems unlikely, and more to the point, uninformative. He was democratically elected: a plurality of voters wanted this outcome. He still has wide support among them.
It is true that foreign powers have been spreading propaganda in his favor, and the result is a weakening of the country. But that's not the result of one person betraying the nation. It's the result of American beliefs about what their nation is and should be.