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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

#461

Post by brilliantcode »

vacri wrote: post #363
brilliantcode wrote: post #273

This is a slippery slope, I read it as "lets censor ourselves for this week and everybody should do their part". Tech is like any other industry, it's rife with politics. I don't agree with trolling but obviously this place isn't reddit, lot of political debates are valuable and offer insights for those less politically inclined. If we agree to this policy what guarantee is there in the future that other topics that…

> This is censorship pure and simple. No, it's 'moderation'. Censorship is where you can't say something in any (public) outlet. > Is HN an America based community that reflects the core beliefs in freedom of speech & expression? No, because downvoting 'ghosts' a comment, there's shadowbanning, dead comments, and the mods can already kill stories. Moderation is already alive and kicking on HN; there's plenty of it do…

> Censorship is where you can't say something in any (public) outlet.

HN is a public outlet, anyone is free to register and participate in the discussion. The thread is soliciting the community to censor themselves with a pretty vague and large blanket under "politics".

HN is run by an American corporation correct, it's servers are in America, then it should follow American values. If this was a Chinese or Russian company, well, their land their rules.

People are freaking out because dang set a precedent for future discourse, the community leadership can declare any topic they deem unsuitable with a pretty vague set of rules and discretion which does not follow a democratic process.

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

#462

Post by pfooti »

chrissnell wrote: post #205
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 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…

I think that it's important to support minority opinions, sure. Civil discourse needs to be civil.

That said, not wanting to talk about politics is a political act. It's basically saying, "let's let the status quo keep going for now", because most things involve politics on some level.

Can we get away from namecalling and toxic behavior? Sure. But having a politics free space isn't the way to do that.

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

#465

Post by bargl »

s_q_b wrote: post #427
bargl wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I empathize with your view, but I very much disagree with you. 1) It's an experiment, there should never be any disagreement with an experiment unless the experiment itself can cause harm to someone/something. The results of this experiment should be evaluated closely, and if they make new guidelines for HN I'm fully onboard. But it's an experiment. 2) The person who shot the gun did not read HN, I may be wrong but I…

1. This experiment is directly harmful in that it is using living subjects, without ethics review. 2. The person who shot the gun was informed by Reddit, a company that had it's genesis here. The Y Combinator is a function that makes other functions . The Internet is not like a blank canvas. The decisions we make about a platform, about news optimization, and about community structure affect our public discourse. If…

1) No it is not going to harm it's living subjects. That is complete hyperbole. You having to go somewhere else for your news for a week will not affect you. Sweet baby Jesus. Seriously?

2) The person was informed by the hive mind of a subreddit that reddit allows. I mean look at what happened when the Steve went and edited user data on Reddit. We talk about not wanting censorship, but then we blame technologies that don't sensor for having toxic communities. How do you find out if the community or the individual is to blame? Would you perform an Experiment?

3) Software has perpetuated the thought bubble issue, this is one thing I can think of being introduced to society purely by software so I agree on this point.

4) Which is why I think after the experiment we should go back to politics on HN.

> Finally, how could anything be more crucial to technologists than discussion of those who will hold the reigns of the national security sector?

I get my political news from other sources, I'd suggest anyone reading this does too.

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

#468

Post by dang »

gioele wrote: post #413
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 find this experiment a bit strange/disturbing, avoiding political subjects is a way of putting the head in the sand. I wonder why it is called an experiment at all. In the end this just the mods upholding the part of HN guidelines [1] that I like the most: If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. The problem with having stories and comments about mundane politics is also that they bury the technica…

The HN guidelines say most politics are off-topic, not all. So we are talking about a change here, though I suppose it's a bigger change in our (peculiar) world than in most HN users'.

Edit: but it's only a change for one week!

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

#469

Post by scotch_drinker »

nneonneo wrote: post #174

Many of the top-level comments here are against this move. I, on the other hand, would like to express my strong support for this move. Hacker News has never been an anything-goes site. Tight moderation, considerate rules, and low tolerance for bullshit have made this a great site to talk about interesting technical topics and ideas. Remember that we all abide by the rules of the site, and that this isn't a magic fre…

I really wish this top level comment could get some traction. People seem to think that because something is important to them, it should be important to the community but that's not how communities work. I for one feel that no amount of discussion of politics on HN is going to meaningfully change or move forward the debate and is unlikely to be instructive to people who have already made up their minds. What I love about HN is that it's mostly rational. People aren't being rational right now in the political world and while I could see an argument being made for enforcing rationality through strong moderation here, I also think an experiment like this provides value.

It would be interesting to know how they will judge the results of this experiment when it concludes.

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

#470

Post by jc_811 »

A submission on climate change was flagged and removed due to these political guidelines. Is this really considered political? Wouldn't it be more justified to call it 'scientific'?

How is anyone supposed to realistically draw the line between what is political and what is not? Couldn't any topic in the world be related back to politics one way or another?

This seems like a blatant plot to censor 'unwanted' topics and articles. A huge downvote from me.

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