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

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

#761

Post by jpdus »

idlewords wrote: post #380

This is a terrible decision. The tech industry has built powerful tools of social control, and runs vast databases of private data on pretty much everyone in the country. We have a golden period of forty-some days before a new administration comes to power that has shown every intent of using that information to deport people and create a national Muslim registry. We need to be talking about the political implication…

This!

HN is one of the few places where informed discussion is actually possible and even opposing views (as long as they are objective and well reasoned) are adding to the discussion (and often upvoted). Shutting that off just because of some unfounded downvotes or trolling in times where such discussions are extremely important is cowardly and a very sad move in my opinion. HN is better (and more important) than you think.

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

#762

Post by grzm »

dkarapetyan wrote: post #757
macrael wrote: post #755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

idlewords recently organized a meetup to discuss exactly those questions: https://sfbay.techsolidarity.org/2016/11/28/meeting_notes.ht...

This is great. More of this and less mud slinging on HN might actually move the needle.

For comparison, you can view how these very notes were discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13085270

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

#763

Post by codehusker »

dang wrote: post #699
OJFord wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too find this to be an argumentum ad absurdum. > The values of Hacker News are intellectual curiosity > and thoughtful conversation. > For one week, political stories are off-topic. That said, I can support: > Those things are lost when political emotions seize > control. This ban should be on political emotions seizing control; not on intellectual conversation surrounding political stories.

In theory, yes, of course. In practice, that distinction doesn't hold up—not on the public internet and not at scale. The discussions are tribal. I'd be happy to say "No Tribalism on HN" but how would we enforce it and how could anyone comply? Tribalism is not something people have conscious control over.

What is the difference between "No politics on HN" and "No tribalism on HN" in terms of enforcement and compliance?

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

#764

Post by beachstartup »

DougN7 wrote: post #360
fnovd wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

It's a lot like that classical definition of pornography. I can't define it, but I know it when I see it. If a topic gets a lot of downvotes this week, it means it crossed the line for a lot of people. Simple :)

yeah, and in that case about pornography, censorship was shot down.

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

#765

Post by QuarterReptile »

tarikjn wrote: post #62

I 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'd suggest that the point of avoiding political discussion is not just because it's unpleasant or divisive. In my eyes, the problem is that politics has so much implicit back-end that it cannot be usefully discussed on an internet forum. In the several paragraphs (at most) that we write to another, we convey so little while disagreeing on so much. Besides that, there's the issue that we spend much of political discourse not actually explaining ourselves, but rather signaling to others what camp they should put us in.

My wife and I, on several occasions each day, will say to one another, "we're describing two different things. We need to take this discussion far deeper, or end it altogether." That's the person with whom I talk more than any other person, and we aren't on the same page on divisive issues tens of times each week.

Without unpacking an issue to a level far beyond the length of forum posts, we cannot possibly hope to be on the same page in our discussions here when they veer into politics. It's better to favor the format of discussing interesting issues about which most of us are unfamiliar. That way, we get fresh eyes thinking about the issue, more polite discourse, and a more educational experience.

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

#768

Post by jrcii »

Oriental is not an offensive term according to the unanimous opinion of over a dozen Asian friends I've broached the subject with, but that opinion isn't aligned with San Fransisco leftist political beliefs so I was banned from HN. Liberals are open to everyone as long as you think exactly like they do, otherwise fascist-style political censorship and hate is the rule.

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

#769

Post by calibraxis »

> What Hacker News is: a place for stories that gratify intellectual curiosity and civil, substantive comments.

It's "startup news": computing for capitalism. We work on social media without knowing anything about sociology. We work on advertising, which is corporate propaganda. We have no vision of the future, unlike technologists in a sane world, so we build a dystopian bureaucratic nightmare where I'm literally filling out a form right now.

Anyway, politics is for billionaires.

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

#770

Post by pauloday »

Mz wrote: post #474
andrewtbham wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am so glad about this. The unwashed masses are ruining this site with political drivel.

Some of us unwashed masses [1] loathe political drivel and totally support [2] this move. 1 I only refer to myself as part of the unwashed masses because: A) I am not actually a programmer B) I am incredibly poor and C) I literally do not bathe frequently due to said extreme poverty as I am homeless. ;-) 2 Evidence of total support: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108692

You seem exactly like the type of person that should be here, don't worry :) I don't know what they meant by "unwashed masses", but it kind of seems like there have been a lot of new posters coming here to talk about politics and nothing else. Honestly I think this site started getting mentioned a lot more on Reddit (especially the technology sub), and more people from there started posting here because they felt it was a more civilized place to discuss politics. That's true, but it's also specifically not a politics focused forum (unlike /r/technology) and I think that's messing some people up.
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