I just found HN not too long ago and i really like the insightful discussions, it reminds me of reddit before they started banning and censoring everyone for any disagreement with extreme left politics.
I remember i was banned from every single front page subreddit for asking a question about mask policy during covid. I think one week they said masks provided very little protection and they were in limited supply so individuals should stay home and save the masks for healthcare workers and then the next week they said everyone should wear a mask even if you have to reuse an old one for a week straight and even if your entirely alone. So i asked why the sudden change from one week to the next and might have said something like the previous advice made more sense to me and got banned from basically all of reddit.
And that was when i finally managed to kick my reddit addiction. So now i stumble across HN and it seems just like an early reddit except with one main community instead of a bunch of smaller ones. But i see a very similar trend already in the few months ive been lurking and the few weeks ive been commenting, ive seen what looks like political based moderation rather than conduct based.
Im all for keeping discussions civil and engaging but when you try to control which arguments are allowed to be made or block anyone from making a decent argument to favor one side over another then i lose all interest in anything discussed there because you cant have a discussion when one side cant speak. Thats why reddit is so empty today. You can have empty memes and pointless joking around but you cant talk about anything real unless your just a ranting raving lunatic because thats what you become when you dont have anyone to push back against your crazy ideas. Echo chambers are full of lunatics because echo chambers create lunatics. So if you want to keep this space full of actual discussion then dont allow it to become an echo chamber which means you have to defend the right for people you disagree with to have a voice in this space even if its just so that others can explain to them where they may have overlooked something when forming their argument.
Politically i find myself in the center because i tend to disagree with democrats about as often as i disagree with republicans but i can understand where they are coming from and often agree with the idea but i disagree with the implementation. But in my experience the only people who try to stop me from speaking are democrats. The only sites which have a censorship problem are run with a clear democrat bias. Personally id rather have a hate filled platform where people are free to discuss and associate than a locked down platform with no disagreement or hate or mean words where people arent allowed to talk freely.
I value civility but i value the freedom to discuss and thus the freedom to think about and articulate ideas far more.