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

Do you really feel the political discussion here advances the interests of any of those marginalized groups? I've seen people explicitly change their minds on technical issues due to comments here; politics, not so much. Whatever the solution is, I don't think it can be found on HN. The recent flare up in politics here seems far more likely to make things worse if anything.

I also don't see how it is impossible to restrict discussion to technical issues that are not politically relevant. Here's a few things on the front page receiving quite a bit of discussion right now:

  - R vs. Python for Data Science
  - Why does calloc exist?
  - Mux – A lightweight, fast HTTP request router for Go

I haven't read all the comments, but I think you'd have to try really hard to discuss anything political on those, unless you consider language flamewars political. So there appears to be plenty of things to discuss on HN other than politics without moving to a malignant "default position".

I flagged this post because supressing political speech systematically, and even ignoring it, is actually active political discourse. Politics is not and never will be a separated topic, it is inextricable from everything we care about. This Tell HN is arguing for a specific political position about the nature of public discourse (that it is best stewarded from the top down by extremely rich people who overwhelmingly skew white, straight and male), and is arguing that intellectual curiosity and conflict are generally exclusive. This post is one tribe within the broader community of HN exerting its dominance over other tribes while pretending to be high-minded in resistance to tribalism.

Don't confuse yourselves: your tribe doesn't feel in immanent danger, doesn't think this community is in a unique position to help the world in a dangerous moment, and wants to stop being bothered by the imposition of reality on the dominant tribe that seems able to weather the storm and continue peacefully enriching itself. That is the tribe that owns HN, that seems to be the tribe that is in control of Silicon Valley's immense resources which are, to the profound shame of the entire industry, not being used to try to save its country.

The president is deeply unstable, lies constantly and has hired a team of bigoted, addled, corrupt old white men to serve him. Autocracy is incredibly dangerous. But it won't affect the leaders of the tribe who wrote this shameful post. Rich straight white people will almost certainly be safe from suffering. My family won't be and already isn't in vast swaths of the country.

This post and others in the last month have taught me that HN is not a community of smart people interested in technology. It is an apparatus of a few privileged people and their businesses that serves mostly one narrow community (engineers who are focused on earning money and/or luxuriating in their own preoccupations) that the owners want things from (talent and money). We can't learn together by hiding from this moment.

When talking politics means talking about the internment of muslims, talking about a conspiracy of Jews puppeteering the global economy, talking about refusing to enforce any civil rights laws that happen to mostly protect black people, when politics means the destabilization of the global economy and the global military equilibrium established since Workd War II, well then enforcing the state of not talking about politics is itself an act of violence.

>If anything, a dissenting opinion (e.g. one in favor of Trump or the NSA) could add something new to the conversation but it would get down voted to hell and get ugly pretty fast.

I'll take the bait.

About a little of a year ago, when I worked in a lab, some of my colleagues routinely laughed and mocked Trump and boasted how he had no chance in hell (as well as fueling fire with continued patronage of sites and news that gave them more of the same "entertainment" [in their words]), and no amount of me pointing out to them the environment that enabled a such a persona to exist/rise to fame/power should be the topic of conversation rather than on the team $x circus ring leader de jour.

From where I stand, the problem with a ban on political discussion isn't really the content of it, just the intellectual naivety that one can shield themselves political discussion while ignoring all the not so hidden influences of such on ones culture, thought processes, and etc is laughable will only end in rude awakenings, because in reality such a ban can only be superficial, and never really cut to the heart of such issues that underpin political discussion.

Like another commentator said: "Talk is cheap and political discussion is especially cheap" and I'd add that superficial bans to hide or sideline political discussion, are can be incredibly expensive (filter bubbles, walled gardens, deep packet inspections, paid "moderators", "cultural fit" selectors) in the search of temporarily being in control, yet ultimately futile.

> Political Detox Week

I don't understand how so many people have missed the word "week" in this sentence.

This is an experiment, and it's going to last a very short period of time; I support it. I oppose banning political articles & discussion on HN in the long-term, but that's not what this is. It seems the distinction has been missed in most of the comments.

One option I would like to suggest is an option whereby people can enable or disable a filter for political stories. This way if you just want to come and geek out about tech, you can do so, or if you want to follow political issues you have that option as well. I'd use both modes at different times depending on my mood.