Paul Graham created the social news website Hacker News, associated it with his well-known Silicon Valley startup Y Combinator (which is hosting President Obama in May), and ran it until recently. It works similarly to reddit, so you would expect democratic content determined by its users. What most people don't know is how much behind-the-scenes moderators are controlling the stories. They were recently caught penalizing a story on SpaceX merely because a space launch didn't seem like a "major story" to them, and they routinely edit the titles of front page stories.

Covert moderator slant on a user-run news site is a problem. But I want to talk about something more serious. Graham is a political ideologue, and Hacker News is used to present a slanted perspective on Israel and Jewish issues, while claiming neutrality. When it comes to Israel, rather than enforce the site rules, a disturbing double standard is applied.

Israel is a free, democratic country, and a key U.S. ally. It made the desert bloom, turning a wasteland into a modern civilization. Israel is a humane, tolerant country and has Arab members of its government. It has a free press, productive industry, and contributes to scientific progress. Israel provides a home to millions of Jews, who were persecuted in most other countries around the globe. Now some anti-Semites hide under the guise of only being anti-Israel.

Israeli culture values life, while many of its enemies don't. Despite – or perhaps because of – these virtues, Israel has been under attack for pretty much its entire history. It has been violently attacked by Arab states and terrorists, and it has come under political attack from many Western countries which have a history of persecuting Jews. Israel has repeatedly faced existential threats, and survived. In this context, bias against Israel is particularly unwarranted, dangerous, sad and important.

Paul Graham

Let's begin with some background on Graham. His personal website has a revealing 2004 essay. Graham shows us his political leanings by comparing Winston Churchill's speeches to a German "purge". And in the full context of the essay, he is actually setting up Churchill's political opponents as brave Galileos, with Churchill as the Inquisition.

The word "defeatist" ... in Germany in 1917 ... was a weapon, used by Ludendorff in a purge ... At the start of World War II it was used extensively by Churchill and his supporters to silence their opponents. In 1940, any argument against Churchill's aggressive policy was "defeatist". Was it right or wrong? Ideally, no one got far enough to ask that. (emphasis added)

In 1940, Germany was waging an aggressive war in which it conquered a large chunk of Europe and then started bombing Britain. In this context, Graham thinks Churchill was too aggressive, while London was under attack. Now that you have a sense of what kind of political ideologue Graham is, and what sort of essay he wrote, let's examine what it says about Israel:

I admit it seems cowardly to keep quiet. When I read ... that pro-Israel groups are "compiling dossiers" on those who speak out against Israeli human rights abuses ... part of me wants to say, "All right, you bastards, bring it on." The problem is, there are so many things you can't say. If you said them all you'd have no time left for your real work. You'd have to turn into Noam Chomsky.

Graham is misquoting from this article. It reads:

No school has announced plans to divest from Israel, but leaders of the [academic divestment-from-Israel] campaign are seeking to ratchet up the pressure, and plan to plot strategy at the University of Michigan in mid-October.

Supporters of Israel in academia have been organizing as well. The Middle East Forum, a non-profit organization led by several scholars and writers, this week began compiling "dossiers" on professors who criticize Israel and offer "biased" views about the Middle East, Islam, and foreign policy issues.

Graham, in a rejection of scholarship, removed the quotes around "dossiers". Worse, he misrepresented the article and cited it out of context. The article was saying how anti-Israel academics have an organized campaign going on, and some supporters of Israel are organizing as well. Their defense of Israel includes gathering information about biased professors, which isn't sinister. The article isn't, as Graham would have us believe, saying something bad about "pro-Israel groups".

What does Graham think of defenders of Israel? They are "bastards" who he implies are trying to silence their opponents with underhanded tactics that his own source doesn't back up. And in the full context of his essay, Graham has compared professors who oppose divesting from Israel to the Inquisition.

Now you know who Graham is. But what hidden role do his political views play on Hacker News?

Banning Dissent

While running Hacker News, Graham enforced the rules in a selective manner and banned dissent. The most stunning example occurred when the anti-Israel article Propaganda war: trusting what we see? by Paul Reynolds was posted. Reynolds himself received hundreds of emails regarding his inflammatory political article. The article is inappropriate for Hacker News, which has the following policy:

The focus of Hacker News is going to be anything that good hackers would find interesting ... anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

It may be easier to say what that doesn't include. It doesn't include most stories about politics ... Basically, if they'd cover it on TV news, it's off-topic.

Reynolds' political article is something that would be covered on TV news, not something to gratify intellectual curiosity. Recognizing that it was inappropriate for Hacker News, user qqq wrote, "No politics. No anti-semitism. Go away. Flagged." (Disclosure: qqq is Elliot Temple.) Graham replied, 'Following the sentence "no politics" with one equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism is a bit hypocritical. It does show why stories that intersect with politics are dangerous though; the topic seems to bring out the most irrational in people.' After implying that qqq is irrational, later that day Paul Graham banned qqq from Hacker News without giving any further reason.

Graham was saying the article merely contains criticism of Israel, and was appropriate for Hacker News, even though it blatantly violated the site guidelines. This shows how Hacker News works: off-topic political articles are allowed when they have the right slant but (as we'll see below) are buried when they don't. The selective enforcement of rules creates a biased environment. Graham doesn't keep his political positions separate from Hacker News.

Anti-Israel or Anti-Semitic?

Does Reynolds' article contain anti-Semitism, as qqq said, or is it merely legitimate criticism of Israel as Graham claimed?

Reynolds calls Israeli public relations "propaganda". That is a strong term. You don't normally see it used when discussing the public relations of others countries like USA, France or Japan. When Israel is attacked in a way other countries aren't, that is a vicious double standard, not reasoned criticism. Now let's look over a condensed version of the article, quoting key parts:

Israel released video of an air attack on 28 December, which appeared to show rockets being loaded onto a lorry. The truck and those close to it were then destroyed by a missile.

a 55-year-old Gaza resident named Ahmed Sanur ... claimed that the truck was his and that he and members of his family and his workers were moving oxygen cylinders from his workshop.

Mr Sanur said that eight people, one of them his son, had been killed. He subsequently told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: "These were not Hamas, they were our children... They were not Grad missiles.".

The Israeli response was that the "materiel" was being taken from a site that had stored weapons.

But the incident shows how an apparently definitive piece of video can turn into something much more doubtful.

It is reminiscent of an event in the Nato war against Serbia over Kosovo in 1999. In that case, a video taken from the air seemed to show a military convoy which was then attacked.

On the ground however it was discovered that the "trucks" were in fact tractors towing cartloads of civilian refugees, many of whom were killed.

Whether Israel retains any propaganda initiative is not all certain. Pictures of dead and wounded children have undermined its claim to pinpoint accuracy...

Take note of the methods Reynolds uses.

Statements of the free, accountable and democratic Israeli government are held up against the claims of the unknown and unaccountable Ahmed Sanur. Is that a fair comparison? Should those be given equal credence? Would other governments have their statements treated as equally credible to the unsubstantiated story of a hostile foreigner? No, this is a double standard.

Notice how the unsubstantiated claim that Israel killed "children" is echoed later in the article. But has Reynolds determined that Israel killed the children in the unspecified pictures? Or has Reynolds analyzed whether Israeli military actions are justified due to necessary self-defense? No. He's taken events out of the context of ongoing terrorist actions against Israel in order to demonize Israel as child-killer.

Another tactic Reynolds uses is, rather than accusing Israel of murdering civilians, he reminisces about a different unsourced incident. Then he describes "cartloads of civilian refugees" being killed. How do you argue with someone who is just reminiscing? The point isn't to present critical arguments, it's to paint a picture which blows the incident out of proportion.

The thinker Natan Sharansky has published a 3D test for judging anti-Semitism. The three Ds are demonization, double standards, and delegitimization. It only takes one to qualify for anti-Semitism; Reynolds' article fits two. "[W]hen Israel's actions are blown out of all sensible proportion", that is demonization. "When criticism of Israel is applied selectively; when Israel is singled out", that is a double standard.

For more information about these issues, I recommend starting with The Israel Double Standard by Victor Davis Hanson. In it he argues: "The prejudice against Israel in diplomatic matters is as troubling as more crude bigotry against Jews."

So, Reynolds' argument meets criteria for anti-Semitism. But Graham sided with it, claiming it was merely legitimate "criticism of Israel". Despite it violating site guidelines, he kept it on the site. He even banned a user for dissenting. This demonstrates how Graham's anti-Israel views guide Hacker News moderation and create bias.

Continuing Legacy

Several weeks ago, Graham put Daniel Gackle in charge of Hacker News. Gackle is following in Graham's footsteps. He promptly buried a USA Today article reporting on anti-Semitism.

Gackle explained, "The story is (a) off-topic, (b) designed for outrage, (c) if it isn't propaganda, would require careful sourcing to show it—something that HN is the wrong place for." When an article has the wrong politics, it's promptly moderated as off-topic.

Two days later Gackle's integrity was tested. The political article, Did Israel steal bomb-grade uranium from the United States? from The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was posted. Gackle refused to take any action against it, even though it met the same criteria he'd said justified "killing" the USA Today article.

The Bulletin's article was (a) an off-topic political article. It was (b) designed for outrage, as you can see from the title accusing Israel of stealing. And, (c) it would require better sourcing. As I explain below, The Bulletin isn't a reputable source. Unfortunately, Gackle moderates with the same double standard as Graham, selectively burying articles with political views he doesn't like, while keeping articles he agrees with.

Gackle ignored a prompt email explaining the problem in time to act. During the six hours the article was on the front page, he wrote in detail about some minor downvoting issues, proving he was available to moderate. When pressed about the issue, he admitted two days later that he had made an intentional decision as head moderator. Gackle then told the user who raised the issue to stop sending emails. He expressed his unwillingness to consider facts or arguments which contradict him about Israel.

Gackle also emailed, "I see no double standard or even any particular connection between the two stories", ignoring the explanation he'd received. He added that the USA Today story "was a sensational article about an ongoing political battle" and "obviously off-topic". But an article accusing Israel of stealing is also sensational, political, and off-topic. So why doesn't Gackle see any double standard?

In defense of The Bulletin's article, Gackle simply called it "a fairly substantive historical piece". That was after he had already been informed that The Bulletin publishes extreme anti-Semitic revisionist history:

First, Israel cannot be said to face an existential threat when, in the many Arab-Israeli conflicts that have occurred since World War II, Israel has almost always been the aggressor.

This kind of historical lie goes far beyond mere criticism of Israel or a factual error. (Israel has not been the aggressor in its wars. For the real history, read this or any reputable source.) It's so far away from substantive historical analysis that it boggles the mind. But Gackle closed his eyes to his role in spreading this kind of anti-Semitic material. Like Graham before him, Gackle lets his political views guide his moderator actions, and applies a vicious double standard when it comes to Israel.

I call on Hacker News to make immediate changes. Instead of working behind the scenes to promote political biases, take responsibility for creating a fair and neutral forum. Or at least admit how the site works, instead of trying to mislead readers. Israel deserves better treatment.

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Update: (2015-10-16) The people behind the scenes at Hacker News now hand pick stories they want on the front page. It's not a user-generated voting-controlled news site. But it pretends to be one and tries to look like one. It's deeply dishonest.

Update 2:Here's another example of controlling the Hacker News front page stories. For some reason they have an ongoing anti-Apple bias too.

EDIT: I wrote a new more detailed article about this.

Paul Graham created the social news website Hacker News (HN), associated it with his company Y Combinator, and ran it until recently. Graham's website contains anti-Israel material. Graham also compares Winston Churchill's speeches to a German "purge". As head HN moderator, Graham banned the user qqq for referring to an inflammatory, off-topic anti-semitic article as "anti-semitism" and suggesting it shouldn't be on a non-political technology news site. The article stayed on HN; anti-semitism, Graham (username pg) believes, is merely legitimate "criticism of Israel".

The article, by Paul Reynolds, applies double standards to Israel, such as calling their public relations "propaganda", when the same public relations by the USA would not be called "propaganda". Reynolds also questions whatever Israel's accountable, democratic government says, while promoting the unsubstantiated claims of a random, unaccountable Palestinian. That is an evidential double standard. Double standards like this are not merely "criticism of Israel", they are anti-semitism.

Reynolds posted updates admitting it was an inflammatory political article that caused outrage. Reynolds acknowledged and commented on the accusation that he was siding with the anti-semitic terrorist organization Hamas. To his slight credit, Reynolds considered it par-for-the-course that his article – which took some similar positions to Hamas – could draw serious complaints, so he spoke to the issue. Graham, on the other hand, has more extreme views than Reynolds and won't admit there's any controversy. Graham banned a user for a criticism that even Reynolds would find understandable, thus trying to silence any defense of Israel on HN.


The new head moderator of HN, Daniel Gackle (username dang), is following in Graham's footsteps. He took moderator action against a recent USA Today article reporting on anti-semitism. Then he applied a double standard by refusing to take action against an anti-Israel article meeting the same criteria which he had said justified burying the other article.

Gackle ignored a prompt email explaining the problem in time to act. At the same time, he replied at great length to some minor comments about downvoting, proving he was available to moderate. When pressed about the issue, Gackle admitted two days later that he had made an intentional decision as HN's head moderator. Gackle told the user who raised the issue to stop sending emails; Gackle is unwilling to consider facts or arguments which contradict him about Israel.

How bad is it? Gackle's best defense was to claim the anti-Israel article was a "fairly substantive historical piece". But we are talking about a site which Gackle had already been informed publishes extreme anti-semitic revisionist history like this:

First, Israel cannot be said to face an existential threat when, in the many Arab-Israeli conflicts that have occurred since World War II, Israel has almost always been the aggressor.

Gackle closed his eyes to his role in spreading this kind of material. HN moderation has a clear bias. It's fair to call it anti-semitism.

My answers to some philosophical prompts (try answering the prompts yourself in the comments below!):

Initiative means... It's important because...

Living life. Doing things instead of doing an impersonation of a rock.

Personal, individual responsibility is... It's good because...

Living life. Doing things for yourself instead of doing an impersonation of a rock.

Taking responsibility for your life means recognizing that other people won't solve your problems for you, and taking initiative to solve them yourself.

Taking responsibility also means choosing to control your own life. (You cannot be responsible for things you do not control.) That requires initiative rather than passively letting things happen – you have to actually do stuff to have any control.

Living irresponsibly-passively means letting external stuff control you, like memes, people ("authorities" or not), or even the weather (e.g. a passive person outside could live in the sun and die in the snow, the weather chooses).

One thing a responsible person does is never evade. He deals with things. Evading is irresponsible because it leaves you with no control over the evaded issue.

Criticism is... It has the following benefits...

A criticism is an explanation of a flaw an idea has. Identifying and understanding flaws makes it a lot easier to fix them (to figure out how to change your ideas to no longer have those flaws).

Persuasion is... It is good because...

Persuasion is about suggesting an idea that someone prefers over some idea(s) they already had. It's straightforwardly good if someone changes ideas to ones that they judge to be better.

Persuasion does not require multiple people. It can be self-persuasion. Persuasion, including self- and external, is how rational learning works.

Fallibility is... It is important to understand because...

People commonly make mistakes, so it's important to use methods of doing things which can identify and correct mistakes that occur along the way, rather than relying on everything going perfectly.

Learning and knowledge...

Want something? Prefer anything? What you need is knowledge. (Learning is getting knowledge.)

Learn how to get what you want. Learn how to meet your preference or goal. If you know how, you'll succeed.

The only exception is if you want something impossible or immoral. In those cases, learning is still the best approach. You can learn that it's impossible or immoral (and why), learn what a better preference/goal/want would be (and why), and learn how to change your mind to have that better preference/goal/want instead with zero hesitation or regrets.

Have any doubts about this? Any questions? The answers are all learnable knowledge. You can learn whether your doubts or correct or not and what's best to do about them. You can learn answers to questions (or learn that a question has no answer, perhaps because it's self-contradictory or nonsense, in which case you can learn how to make better questions, what related questions you'd want answers to instead, etc)

All of this is pure awesome with no drawbacks. It's the right way to live.

Reason has to do with correcting errors. What I mean is...

Rationality is commonly confused with being right. Actually, it's about how one takes into account the possibility of being wrong. Rationality is ability to find and correct errors. It's about being able to make changes going forward.

Without rationality, it doesn't matter how great one is today; long term one is screwed without change, because all people are only at the beginning of infinity. There's still unlimited progress, change and greatness ahead. However great you are today, if you don't change, you will be passed. (That you might die before this issue has maximum effect is not exactly comforting.)

Authority is... It is bad because...

Authority is the enemy of all of the above, especially life.

Following authority means not living on your own initiative. Following authority means not taking responsibility for your life and controlling it, but rather letting the authority be the primary responsible party making choices and controlling outcomes. (One would still be responsible for the choice to follow authority, thus allowing for plenty of moral guilt, but not much else.)

Authority isn't rational. It doesn't control things by having the best most persuasive ideas that have been exposed to lots of criticism in order to figure out the best ideas. It's not about learning, it's not designed for each person to control his life using his judgment and knowledge.

one meaning of the word “rational” is “has authority, is Right". even “True”, sometimes. this is a bad meaning, but a standard English meaning nonetheless.

basically ppl are justificationists and use “rational” to mean what’s good in that epistemology. and the basic point of justificationism is: if an idea doesn’t have authority, why would anyone (rationally) accept it? the "rationally" excludes reasons like arbitrarily due to taste, or chosen by self-interested bias.

what’s good in their epistemology is authority and being Right and having the Truth.

for this approach to reason, an idea can be rational. saying an idea is rational is claiming it is True, or at least has Authority.

a better approach is to see reason as a process. the point is to think about ideas in a way that can make progress. that means that if a mistake is made, the process can find out and correct it. error correcting approaches are rational, and ones which prevent error correction are irrational.


so, the standard idea most people have is: knowledge = JTB (justified, true belief)

meaning you should Believe ideas which are True, but you only get credit if you believe them due to authority (justification), NOT for any other reason (b/c if they don’t have authority but turn out true, why'd you believe it? that wasn't a rational belief, you didn't know it was true, you just got lucky that it happened to be true)

i've been trying to figure out a good word that means roughly no-authority, but approaches the issue in a positive way, saying what the concept *is* rather than isn't, and not mentioning any opposing view. i don't think there is such a word! :(((

the word "freedom" isn't specific and clear enough. same for "liberal", "liberty", "reason" or "rational".

the words "humility" and "modesty" are too negative and have mistakes mixed in. their synonyms are worse.

"decentralized" doesn't get the point across well, it's too much of a special case.

"non-justificationist" would not be understood, nor would "fallibilist".

The word "independence", like some of the others, is too connected with politics not philosophy. also, like some of the others, lots of people who are pro-authority would be in favor of it and not see the contradiction

"cooperation" is too specific (not covering all the meaning) and people won't understand the connection

"no-authority" or "anti-authority" are both defining it in terms of what it's not. i want a word which means the right concept, rather than just denying an opposing view

some other potentially useful words are, "self-rule" (which sounds way too much like being your own authority), "self-determination", "autonomous"

btw if you look up the antonyms of "authority", they are terrible. they are words like weakness, powerlessness, inferiority, and disadvantage. that is what people think lack of authority is like. it tells you something about how badly they want authority, and see authority as a major goal and all around desirable thing. http://thesaurus.com/browse/authority

it's really sad, and says something about our culture, that there's no anti-authority word that is on par with the word "authority" for clarity, being well known and understood, applying broadly, and other things one would want from a word which make it easy to use effectively. like you can use "authority" for both political and epistemological discussions and people won't blink, they won't find it at all odd, weird, confusing or objectionable, it's just natural. but with a word like "independence", that's primarily a political word, and people will hesitate if they see it in a philosophy context.


one place I'd like to use this word is a slogan. something kinda like:

initiative, responsibility, criticism, persuasion, humility

the other words there are decent enough but "humility" is bad


another reason i want a no-authority word is for epistemology discussion. i've identified rejection of authority as perhaps the most important theme of the good epistemology, more than fallibilism, criticism, rationalism, objectivity, or existence (Rand considered "Existentialism" before "Objectivism", but it was taken).

i think the top two epistemology concepts are no-authority and error-correction. both are implied by fallibility but no one knows that. (nor do they know much about the relationship between the "critical" in "critical rationalism" and error-correction).

they also both imply each other. the rejection of authority entails needing to worry about error (as opposed to trusting authority to be right). and correcting errors requires considering the merits of ideas, rather than their amount of authority.


another word that would be nice is error-correction as one word. but that's not so important because error-correction is a descriptive phrase that positively identifies the right thing to do, without mentioning any opposing view.


another word I'd like is a positive word for non-TCS-coercion. "common preference finding" doesn't work well, it's too specific and is jargon.


another word I'd like is a positive word for non-force. there's "peace" but that's for groups not an individual level. there's "cooperation" but using that word does not communicate to people "no force allowed". people will consider relationships involving some force to be "cooperative". there's "voluntary" and "consensual" but they don't really capture it.


post suggestions in the comments

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It is not fitting for humans to take on parochial labor roles. Rather than divide labor, we must abolish it: labor is for machines. When we have universal machines construct according to our mind and thought, then each man will be an island, and there shall be no more division of labor.

I wrote this argument with references to four people. Who are they?

I won't say if guesses are correct unless you get all four exactly, or you explain the reasoning for your guess.

Bonus points if you can figure out what the argument is saying, analyze whether it's a good argument, and explain why I consider this puzzle worthwhile.

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