A more useful addition would be a contributions calendar similar to GitHub's [2] but focused on which time zones the user is active within, and importantly, the latency of the user's replies. It's trivial to fake geographic location observed through source IP addresses (or even RTT multilateration) but much harder to fake time zones a user is active within, particularly if monitoring latency of replies.
edit: To further clarify, I don't think a contributions calendar would be beneficial to HN either. I've never cared to think about the country a commenter resides in, and don't care about username/real name either unless the commenter is appealing to their own authority (e.g. "I am the author of this software"). Even then, the usefulness of an appeal to own authority is often limited to the ability to reverse lookup the user's personal website (which itself is proven to be notable from other sources) for a link back to their HN profile.
[1] https://impliedchaos.github.io/ip-alloc/
[2] https://docs.github.com/en/account-and-profile/concepts/cont...
Green accounts come to mind :^)
In some sense, the hominem is in the eye of the beholder. The vast majority of people on HN are smart enough to use the information for its useful purpose and not use it for attacking other authors based on whereabouts, doing so will only damage the offender's standing here.
> If country/etc is relevant for discussion it can be voluntarily mentioned.
This misses the important case of relevant location info that the author fails to mention, and I'm pretty sure these will be the majority of cases.
People in different countries have different perspectives and knowing where the authors are located can help to understand their reasoning.
Bot farms in cheap countries are another problem that can be reduced by location info, those who absolutely must have their location hidden can use VPNs.
Moderation: Won't meaningfully impact moderation. HN can already see this info and they are the ones that take moderator action. It may hurt moderation/increase moderation costs because people may tend more to report content based on country instead of content.
Transparency: Outright influencer content (political or corporate) doesn't make it to the front page enough for it to matter, or if it does, I can't tell.
Anti-abuse: Same as moderation. Abuse reports should be processed based on content and not country of origin.
Meaningfully improves discussion quality: If a story is about something happening in a particular country, people who look like they are from that country might get asked more or different questions. This puts people from that country on the spot. They may get increased unsolicited communication or thread hijacks. Right now, if someone wants to be on that spot, they can voluntarily identify, either in the profile or in the post.
Possibly something useful would be a rule/requirement that claiming to be from a country different than the one you made an account from--seen either in a profile or post--requires verification for further posting, but if you never make such a contrary claim, the verification is not needed.
The only thing this is going to produce is people fighting because of where they're from.
There is plenty to disagree in the tech world as it is to introduce other axes of divergence.
The reason why it works on Elon's kingdom is that - as far as I know - the Onion services died when Elon took over (because the people who cared about those simply left) and over at X - as far as I understand - they really, really try and discourage you from connecting and posting from Tor and VPN.
Also, when people turn discussions into absolute flame wars or decide to post stuff which could turn nasty in the comment section there's always dang. And believe me when I say that even when community moderation fails for whatever reason the rules (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) will get enforced when needed.
Make it optional that you don't need to display it but you cannot misrepresent your country.
If not blocking VPN's, then display "Possible VPN".
Perhaps to get some adoption, make it opt-in and also let users enable flag-display at the risk of giving off 4chan vibes.
One where the users are completely anonymous and comments have no history attached to them.
One where the users have profiles and comment history but are not linked back to real life.
One where your real user profile / brand is at stake.
And have public analytical metrics to see what people are saying or what bot farms have been hired to say and who hires them
Folks are allowed to be knowledgeable about things that are not directly relevant in their “county of origin” in the same way they are allowed to be ignorant about things that are relevant.
Privacy first or conscientious exposition of the meta.
I have been advocating that privacy isn’t anyone’s right, it is anyone’s responsibility. Only for the self obsessed to pike my karma and rail their venomous hatred of platforms they use not respecting their identities by ignoring them properly.
I would love to see what you’ve described, though the caveats include those of increased awareness grappling with a whole lot more going on than just the loose strings it has become most popular to pull upon.
And as soon as you shine a light, any creeping critters will scurry, innovating faster to compensate than the mob of yourselves are capable of realizing. The cycle of anonymity and wtf continues to churn. An ouroboros.
But if people don't care, then cool.
Keep in mind things aren't always what they seem -- I remember a heatmap going up of where "MAGA" accounts were operated. Unsurprisingly, there was a big chunk in places like St. Petersburg, but there were also hotspots in several middle eastern countries with have large US troop presence.
Keep in mind the guidelines state:
>Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
Frankly, due to the strict guidlines here I suspect most state sponsored trolls would stick to places like Reddit where it's easier to disrupt things with contentious posts.
Always some European or flyover state resident wanting to not feel left out of discussions related to SV.
Otherwise, the call is coming from inside the house when it comes to all kinds of traitorous behaviors. Plus, many people who are on here are immigrants. So, they’re living in Silicon Valley but they’re from China/India/Israel/etc.
Maybe once the site gets 10x as big and the mod team gets overwhelmed, it could serve a purpose, but I doubt that to ever be the case.
I'd only support displaying country flags if that block was implemented. Otherwise hard no.
For twitter/X I'm in favor of it because it might help navigate all the political propaganda on that platform.
