HN Showdead Feature

Users explain how to enable the 'showdead' setting in Hacker News profiles to view hidden 'dead' comments that have been flagged, downvoted, or moderated.

📉 Falling 0.5x Other
2,419
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#8879
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2007
11
2008
28
2009
52
2010
56
2011
94
2012
97
2013
159
2014
118
2015
94
2016
116
2017
114
2018
135
2019
141
2020
187
2021
211
2022
229
2023
207
2024
173
2025
176
2026
21

Keywords

HN BS FLAGGED YouTube DEAD LaTrail newsfaq.html ycombinator.com FAQ ShowDead dead comments profile flagged settings enable vouch hn account visible

Sample Comments

hef19898 Jul 10, 2023 View on HN

You can set show dead in your profile, useful feat to see what kinds of dead comments there are.

pvg Sep 1, 2020 View on HN

The comment was flagged dead, not deleted. You can turn on 'showdead' in your settings to see dead comments.

smegsicle Oct 11, 2022 View on HN

your comments were shadowed "[dead]" probably because you are posting from a new accountyou can enable viewing others' dead comments with 'showdead' in your account settings

happytoexplain Aug 24, 2022 View on HN

You can turn on "showdead" in your account settings to see dead comments.

slater Jun 28, 2025 View on HN

Their nonsense is already flag'd and dead'd, you'd need to enable showdead in your profile to see their posts.

account42 Feb 22, 2023 View on HN

You can enable showdead in your user settings if you want to see [dead] comments.

dang Aug 12, 2022 View on HN

Not sure what you guys mean, but one comment was flagged by users (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32428254) sufficiently to become [dead]. You can see [dead] comments if you want to by turning 'showdead' on in your profile. Does that help?

adrianN Jan 2, 2020 View on HN

In your HN account setting, activate "showdead" to see flagged comments.

rootusrootus Mar 23, 2024 View on HN

You can see dead comments by enabling showdead in your HN profile.

anigbrowl Sep 13, 2021 View on HN

Turn on showdead in your HN settings. If your comments receive multiple flags (as opposed to downvotes) they disappear, but you can see all dead comments if you have Showdead enabled. The downside is the bottom of busy threads tends to have a lot of spam.