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I've noticed that all the online spaces I enjoy visiting are heavily moderated. Whenever I get linked to "free speech" loosely-moderated platforms, I usually hit the back button pretty quick.
Question for the mods: In the old days I don’t remember as much political / world news allowed. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. But I’ve seen more types of TV news s…
When I tried posting a technology angle to this - "Ask HN: Do we care about our captured systems?" - to point out that it's the design of platforms like Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, etc. that's allowing propaganda and ideology to easily get to the top, while easily suppressing the truth - and where on HN it's easy to suppress perfectly valid, well-written, articulate comments to prevent the majority from seeing ideas that may actually be the truth.
It's a problem.
Edit to add: Thanks for all the fish, enjoy your lazy dopamine hit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's very hard to define specific political content as separate from technology. I remember a single Covid scientific paper turning into a 500 post political discussion. Or tech giants and censorship and privacy. How does one separate tech from politics in this sense? Maybe society has become more political and it's making it's way to link aggregator sites?
I think it is more that tech (and tech companies) become more subjects of political debate.
Question for the mods: In the old days I don’t remember as much political / world news allowed. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. But I’ve seen more types of TV news s…
It's very hard to define specific political content as separate from technology. I remember a single Covid scientific paper turning into a 500 post political discussion. Or tech giants and censorship and privacy. How does one separate tech from politics in this sense? Maybe society has become more political and it's making it's way to link aggregator sites?
There is the additional issue that tech has crept into everything and the internet is where modern state-sponsored disinformation and misinformation campaigns are being fought.
Tech is maturing and a consequence of that process is that politics develops. It's not necessarily a bad thing as the cynics say.
Question for the mods: In the old days I don’t remember as much political / world news allowed. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. But I’ve seen more types of TV news s…
It's very hard to define specific political content as separate from technology. I remember a single Covid scientific paper turning into a 500 post political discussion. Or tech giants and censorship and privacy. How does one separate tech from politics in this sense? Maybe society has become more political and it's making it's way to link aggregator sites?
And so you're correct - politics and technology is intertwined, but HN is happy to suppress conversation that would arguably lead to discussing technological solutions.
The biggest problem is our information distribution/propagation (and therefore trust) apparatus is corrupted, which does include the issue with low-to-no-effort downvotes allowing a person to suppress content while getting rewarded via a dopamine hit.
Question for the mods: In the old days I don’t remember as much political / world news allowed. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. But I’ve seen more types of TV news s…
In the decade-plus I've been around, there has always been a small but steady stream of nontech political content. Despite the policy. My perception is that hasn't increased or decreased, though it does have periodic surges (say, US election season). I personally think it adds to the appeal of HN - in moderation, of course. Political conversations here are generally better informed and more polite than they are in other places, and I tend to learn more than I would by solely reading formal news sources.
Question for the mods: In the old days I don’t remember as much political / world news allowed. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. But I’ve seen more types of TV news s…
However, I am saddened with the diminishing engagement with actual hard tech stories (not tech opinion pieces) that reach the front page. Lately, it seems like links to stories about people doing cool software or hardware things with complete write-ups can barely muster enough upvotes to stay on the front page very long, if at all. The comments occasionally yield some fun further discussions, but not like they did 5+ years ago on HN. It seems the interests of the average HN upvoter (who ultimately shapes what we see on the front page) are shifting more toward the political and controversy type pieces.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's very hard to define specific political content as separate from technology. I remember a single Covid scientific paper turning into a 500 post political discussion. Or tech giants and censorship and privacy. How does one separate tech from politics in this sense? Maybe society has become more political and it's making it's way to link aggregator sites?
I think it is more that tech (and tech companies) become more subjects of political debate.
At this point I'm actively looking for a replacement community that focuses much more on ML and Linux, and not on the social issues associated with machine learning, or social justice warriors messing up tech firms, or people who seem to get their "science" from Fox News.