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Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#211

Post by rick_perez »

I find this part of the main problem with the recent US election. You only want political discussions when you agree with it. No matter how civil a person is, it's considered 'uncivil' when it's against San Francisco politics.

When this happens, many people are forced to get their news from the sites deemed 'fake'. The mass banning of opposing viewpoints (which has been happening for a couple of years now) has pushed more people towards these sites and may have actually won Trump the election. If you want to change it, stop silencing all opposing views.

The problem is that politics is in every part of our lives. If you ban politics and religion, people still get political and religious about other things. It's part of human nature (GNU VS BSD), (VI VS Emacs).

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#212

Post by anonbanker »

sean_patel wrote: post #19

I really welcome this move. I couldn't get out of bed on Nov 9th and a few hours of introspection later, I realized I have no control over any of the Political changes and that I shouldn't be causing myself so much stress. So I stopped watching the news -- both online and on TV -- since Nov 9th. It's been an incredible month for me since then. I've made significant progress on my languishing side-projects ( a Show HN…

Thank you for taking advantage of that introspection. it must feel weird when you first realize that approximately half the population disagrees with you.

I believe that, if more people in the United States felt the way you did, we could have world peace in a generation.

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#213

Post by rileyriley »

This is the time for making ourselves uncomfortable and leaving room for others to speak.

It's dangerous to avoid short-term pain by stifling conflict. HN is about technology news and I don't think we should separate the "oh cool" part from the "how will this affect our neighbors" part.

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#214

Post by criley2 »

It's a half measure and it won't help much.

Hackernews is like reddit before subreddits.

It's too big now, too many people, too disparate of subjects, too much noise and not enough signal.

Over the past couple years, definitely in the past 2, hackernews has gone from say a reddit SV subreddit, to a generalized, worldnews/politics/general news generic reddit.

That's not what this is. And when hackernews becomes what reddit.com/r/reddit.com used to be, it dilutes the userbase and invites/attracts people who have nothing to do with the hackernews ideology and culture.

This is a positive first step, but far too little and maybe too late.

This site is becoming a generic catch-all subreddit for all news, and with that change the userbase is reflecting the lack of focus on SV/technology/hacker culture.

Without dramatic intervention, the tides will turn and hackernews will not be an attractive place for real hackers, real innovators. Won't be worth their time anymore. They'll find greener pastures. Many already are.

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#216

Post by cnnsucks »

tunesmith wrote: post #61

I'm not really a fan of this move. I don't see it as an addiction that reduces its power over us by abstaining for a period of time. I also don't agree with applying system effects to individuals - while political discussion can appear to create a dulling or muting effect overall it doesn't mean that individual people aren't being positively influenced, in ways that might have even larger positive effects on the syst…

> I'm not really a fan of this move.

Well I am a fan. What I'm not a fan of is yet another tech site being turned into a political controversy site by bored-at-work pseudo-geeks that need an audience for their outrages. Any time a popular tech site emerges the SJWs, wingnuts, freetards and moonbats turn up and chase off the geeks and nerds.

We DO NOT NEED yet another facet in the outrage echo chamber. The Internet already provides more than enough venues for you to bitch about Trump or Comcast or gamergate or whatever you enjoy being outraged about.

Just look at some of the pure political controversy crap that has appeared on HN recently:

  Wells Fargo says that its customers gave up right to sue by having their signatures forged
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13041730
Fake news. Nothing more nothing less. Wells Fargo claimed nothing of the sort. BoingBoing made it up from whole cloth.

  I gave back my U.S. citizenship. I’m going back to Serbia.
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12963740
Click bait. Also many people familiar with SF found it to be highly improbable.

  Dan Rather: Now, More Than Ever, We Must Stand Up for Science
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12950501
Pure Trump-derangement syndrome click bait by a discredited partisan.

Please; this stuff already gets enough play. Don't ruin HN echoing it as well. Just stop it. We all know what the controversies are; pretending that it's difficult to distinguish is just a cop-out to rationalize allowing it through.

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#217

Post by joggery »

fnovd wrote: post #190
davidw wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> head in the sand There are a ton of other sites where you can follow and debate politics all you want. I'm starting to stick my nose into local politics here in Bend, Oregon, but there's no reason I need to talk about it on HN. I'm ok with compartmentalizing things: HN for tech/startups/'interesting things', and other sites for other things. I love bike racing, too, and feel that it's the best sport in the world, b…

>There are a ton of other sites where you can follow and debate politics all you want. But where do you draw the line of what is 'politics' and what is 'cool nerdy tech stuff'? Is a breakdown of 538's method of poll aggregation too politically charged, even if there's a perfectly good overlap of math and statistics? If Trump makes an out-of-left-field statement about repatriating corporate money, are we prohibited fr…

Politics is about who to blame and hacking is about solving problems. (Blaming is the opposite of solving problems.)

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#218

Post by TeMPOraL »

mbesto wrote: post #136
dang wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, it's not possible to define "politics" precisely, and it would be a mistake to try. But there's nothing new in that; the HN guidelines have always mentioned politics without defining the term, and we get by. We can clarify, though. The main concern here is pure politics: the conflicts around party, ideology, nation, race, gender, class, and religion that get people hot and turn into flamewars on the internet.…

I have an idea - if it's in reference to a topic of CNN, NYT, WSJ, and WaPo's politics sections then it shouldn't be on HN.

It's pretty much what the guidelines have said all along.

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#219

Post by baq »

might as well declare 'emotion detox week' and bury everything not written by robots.

this decision is actively contributing to erosion of the free world, as if not talking about politics makes them go away. hint: it's not and technology and hackers are changing the world so much politics necessarily enters the debate and it just can't be worked around.

ps. is uber breaking labor laws around the world politics or not?

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#220

Post by anonbanker »

knz wrote: post #115
pshc wrote: post #30

Tribalism is so toxic. I'm all for this. But for flagging purposes what's the boundary between a political/non-political story? EDIT: @dang in another comment: Let me clarify. The main concern here is pure politics: the conflicts around party, ideology, nation, race, and religion that get people hot and turn into flamewars on the internet. We're not so concerned about stories on other things that happen to have polit…

> Tribalism is so toxic. And yet isn't one solution to tribalism a respectful exchange of ideas and dialogue? Political changes have many direct impacts on this community - net neutrality, education policy related to STEM, funding for organizations/government agencies that have a long history of supporting technology, legislation concerning the development of new technologies (particularly for the medical and energy…

Have you been witnessing respectful political exchanges on this site? the past 18 months have been pretty awful, in my experience.
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