I understand, and I know HN has the right to control speech in the forum it owns. So I will only write this in the thread where I have been invited to write it (and will note that I am a Libertarian so I of course did not vote for Trump): The major theme of the media and in many comment threads on many sites has been to decry the totalitarian, authoritarian nature of the coming Trump regime. I find it ironic that the response of HN is to implement thought control by suppressing an entire genre of thought. After all, once you rise above the level of bits and bytes, you are going to get into political speech.
But go ahead.
It's a free country.
Just not a free forum (here, that is).
Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
551–560 of 1001 posts
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#552Earlier quoted context omitted.
I fully support this detox week. As someone whose political views don't align with the average HN reader, I often feel marginalized by unfair downvoting in political discussion, even though I have made my points in an informed and respectful way. It often feels like there is one prevailing slant on this site and those of the majority are free to push their views while the rest of us must either read it and ignore it…
Hacker News is an unfair place for people to speak up about about the lack of racial and gender diversity in tech. I have been downvoted for comments where I felt like I was making uncontroversial critiques of the status quo. I have seen HN users say that black neighborhoods need more policing than other neighborhoods. It's not an easy place to be non-white or non-male. I believe banning politics is a bad idea even f…
Some users will down vote comments not because they disagree but because from experience they know that any resulting discussion will be unproductive. Rehashing the same discussion again and again is actively destructive to the community as a whole. It decreases the signal-to-noise ratio, tacitly approves of the negative contributions, and increases the likelihood that those that contribute positively will leave, and the community as a whole will be all the worse for it.
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#553I find this experiment a bit strange/disturbing, avoiding political subjects is a way of putting the head in the sand. HN is a community of hackers and entrepreneurs and politics affects these subjects one way or another wether we want to avoid it or not, and are an important component of entrepreneurial and technical subjects. It might be fine if HN was a scientific community, but it is not the case, and even then p…
I get enough politics elsewhere. I'm looking forward to seeing how this experiment turns out.
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#554I find this experiment a bit strange/disturbing, avoiding political subjects is a way of putting the head in the sand. HN is a community of hackers and entrepreneurs and politics affects these subjects one way or another wether we want to avoid it or not, and are an important component of entrepreneurial and technical subjects. It might be fine if HN was a scientific community, but it is not the case, and even then p…
Well, this certainly trumps anything that Reddit is trying to do with out-right bans. They were like "Oh! BAM" A ban on /r/this and that. This election cycle felt like I was taking a lot of mesclin, ton of it too...
Anyway, I like the non-political week. Anyway... that's just my two pence...
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#555Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#556Who decides what's "political"? Are discussions of regulations surrounding Uber political? The ongoing Tesla/dealership feuds? Using machine learning to detect fake news? New immigration policy that impacts H1B tech workers? The impact of Brexit on tech companies? Restrictions on cryptography? I'm split on this: On one hand, firm moderation and keeping things on-topic makes for a good forum for discussion. On the oth…
> here need to be clearer guidelines around what's allowed and what's not.
We're happy to clarify (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108614) but it's impossible to draw a precise line. Moderation is about a few core principles and a lot of case-by-case judgment calls, and it's inherently unsatisfying.
Whatever rules we have, though, we apply them less rather than more in cases where YC itself or a YC startup is at issue. That's one of the rules :)
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#557Earlier quoted context omitted.
I fully support this detox week. As someone whose political views don't align with the average HN reader, I often feel marginalized by unfair downvoting in political discussion, even though I have made my points in an informed and respectful way. It often feels like there is one prevailing slant on this site and those of the majority are free to push their views while the rest of us must either read it and ignore it…
> It often feels like there is one prevailing slant on this site and those of the majority are free to push their views while the rest of us must either read it and ignore it or face the onslaught of downvotes if we express a dissenting opinion. Are there any online communities where their political opinions match more with yours? Why don't you hang out there instead? I realize that's reinforcing an echo chamber, but…
I don't want to hang out in an echo chamber. I enjoy the diversity of opinions that I find among my coworkers and social media friends. However, neither my workplace nor Facebook feature the "downvote". Being downvoted for expressing an unpopular opinion here is the equivalent of being shoved out of a circle of friends. It doesn't feel good and I don't come here to feel like crap. I don't think I'm all that different than most HN readers when I say that I come here to escape from work or home life for a few minutes and learn about things. Exclusion because you're different has no place on a forum like this.
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#558Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hacker News is an unfair place for people to speak up about about the lack of racial and gender diversity in tech. I have been downvoted for comments where I felt like I was making uncontroversial critiques of the status quo. I have seen HN users say that black neighborhoods need more policing than other neighborhoods. It's not an easy place to be non-white or non-male. I believe banning politics is a bad idea even f…
uncontroversial critiques of the status quo Hmm... Let me try to understand your reasoning. If everyone agreed with your critique of the "status quo", why would it be the status quo to begin with?
There are myriad ways the status quo can be at odds with people's values and desires. Sometimes the status quo remains so because we can't decide on the proper remedy or disagree on the proper remedy. Just because something is status quo does not mean critique is inherently controversial.
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#559I was planning to delay the point when I get to know who the winner was on the elections... (I live in Europe) In work nobody speaks about politics. I don't read traditional news sites. I was just curious who will tell me first. Then I opened Hacker News...
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#560I find this experiment a bit strange/disturbing, avoiding political subjects is a way of putting the head in the sand. HN is a community of hackers and entrepreneurs and politics affects these subjects one way or another wether we want to avoid it or not, and are an important component of entrepreneurial and technical subjects. It might be fine if HN was a scientific community, but it is not the case, and even then p…
I agree 100%. Banning politics for any period of time just because it's not palatable to some does not mean that the world of politics has no value to hackers and entrepreneurs. Politics is a big part of the world and the real world matters. I've said it before and I say it again. Insulated geeks tend to created chat app # 1000 with little to no real world advantages over chat app #999. Putting our heads underground just because we don't like the real world does not help anyone. An example is the appointment of Myron Ebell to head the EPA. Purely political news but climate change is an important part of HN users. The advantage of having politics as part of the HN community is that we have a special view of how technology works and having a better view of the real world gives us a chance to better apply what we know.
In my opinion, the fix is to mark then as political and give the user the choice to bypass them. Either as a prefix such as in "Tell HN" or to flag it as such via a clickable option. Putting a defacto policy against political news is a bad idea.