A Public Ledger of Hacker News Front Page Removals: Transparency or Surveillance?

In the world of online communities, moderation is often a black box. Actions happen behind the scenes, and the public only sees the final result—a story that was once prominent suddenly vanishes. For Hacker News, one of the most influential tech forums on the web, this opacity has now been challenged by a new tool: HackerNewsRemovals, a project that logs every story removed from the front page in real time.

The project, created by developer Vito Plantamura, is straightforward in its execution but profound in its implications. It uses the official Hacker News API to fetch the top 90 stories every minute, comparing them to the top 30 from the previous minute. If a story that was in the top 30 disappears from the top 90, it's logged as removed. The system excludes stories that reappear (likely just falling in rank) and those in the "second-chance" pool. The result is a live, public list of front-page removals, updated with a maximum delay of one minute.

Plantamura's motivation is rooted in curiosity, not confrontation. "I love Hacker News," he writes in the project's README. "I try to read it every day." He acknowledges the immense difficulty of moderating a high-traffic, pseudonymous site. The project's stated purpose is to "try to understand the type and scale of the moderation of the Hacker News Front Page." By making the data public, he hopes to foster a more transparent conversation about how the community's most visible space is curated.

The tool tracks a specific type of moderation: direct removal. It does not track title changes, which can also influence a story's visibility. Plantamura notes that a site already exists for tracking title modifications, so he focused on the more opaque action of deletion. The list includes the story ID, its rank at the time of removal, points, comment count, and a link to a graph showing its position over time on news.social-protocols.org.

The Core Assumption and Its Challenge

The project's methodology rests on a single, critical assumption: "A Story cannot go from the top 30 to a position greater than 90 in a single minute, without having been explicitly removed." This is a logical inference. On a site with thousands of active stories, organic voting patterns typically cause gradual rank changes. A sudden drop from the top 30 to beyond the top 90 suggests moderator intervention.

However, this assumption has been directly challenged. In a discussion on Hacker News about the project itself, a moderator identified as "dang" commented on the core premise. While Plantamura doesn't quote the comment directly, he references it in an update, suggesting the moderator's point is that a story's rank can fluctuate more dramatically than the tool assumes, potentially leading to false positives.

This is the central tension of the project. Is it a transparency tool, or is it a surveillance tool that misinterprets normal platform dynamics as censorship? The data itself is neutral, but its interpretation is not. A story removed for being a duplicate—a "very reasonable reason for removal," as Plantamura notes—appears the same in the log as a story removed for violating community guidelines. The tool cannot automatically distinguish the reason.

What the Data Reveals (and What It Doesn't)

The live list provides a fascinating snapshot of front-page dynamics. Looking at the sample data, we see a mix of topics: technical posts like "Rust for C Programmers" and "Show HN: Minikv," political stories about Greenland and ICE, and philosophical pieces on AI and software development. The removals span a wide range of scores and comment counts, suggesting no simple pattern based on popularity alone.

For example, on January 18, 2026, a story titled "The Death of Software Development" was removed from position #12 with 25 points and 21 comments. On the same day, "Show HN: I built a game on my old phone without knowing what I was building" was removed from #22 with 10 points and 11 comments. The reasons are unknown, but the data is now public.

Plantamura is clear about the tool's limitations. He explicitly asks users to check if a removed story is a duplicate, as this is a common and legitimate reason for removal that his system cannot detect. This admission is crucial—it shows the project is not an accusation but an invitation for the community to add context.

A Potential Path Forward

The creator envisions positive outcomes. He suggests that a list like this could be integrated directly into Hacker News, or that users could be notified when a story they posted is penalized, perhaps with an indication of flags or the reason for removal. This aligns with the project's core goal: not to shame moderators, but to improve communication and understanding.

The project raises fundamental questions about online governance. How much transparency should a community have into its moderation processes? Where is the line between healthy oversight and excessive scrutiny that could chill moderator activity? By creating a public record, HackerNewsRemovals forces these questions into the open.

For developers and community managers, the tool offers a case study in monitoring platform dynamics. The technical approach—using the API to track state changes—is simple but effective. It highlights how even a basic script can generate significant insights when applied to a large, active platform.

Ultimately, HackerNewsRemovals is more than a utility; it's a statement. In an era where platform moderation is increasingly scrutinized, it represents a grassroots effort to bring light to a traditionally dark process. Whether it leads to more transparency from Hacker News itself, or simply sparks a more informed debate among its users, its impact is already being felt. The project's future may depend on how the community and its stewards choose to engage with the data it provides.