from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why does HN continue to allow political content? That is not hacking

by 0xff00ffee on 4/29/20, 3:18 PM with 11 comments

• by alexmingoia on 4/30/20, 3:40 AM

  The why isn’t important. HN would be better without current events. Banning current events would solve the political threads. Without current events the site would be a respite from rather than extension of whatever the current rage is (which is mostly politics).

  Current events also encourage repetitive topics. Every day is multiple coronavirus threads. During an election it’s daily election news. During the 737max thing it’s multiple daily threads on the same thing.

  Every current events topic just turns into a flame war. Coronavirus is a good example. Every thread is an argument about whether lockdown is good or not, how deadly the virus is, etc.

  Ban current events. They dominate every other medium. HN doesn’t need them.

• by AnimalMuppet on 4/29/20, 4:15 PM

  1. At least some politics is not out of scope. Some politics directly impacts the tech world - crypto policy, for example. Some other politics requires tech to work - surveillance, for example.

  2. At least some of us have some interest in some political topics, even if they don't directly impact tech. (Just like some of us have some interest in some philosophical topics, or some cooking topics, or some music topics, or some art topics.) Since HN is a community, not just a web site, then HN discusses whatever enough people on HN find interesting (subject to moderators keeping the flames down).

  3. I've never really understood the angst about articles that don't interest people. There's (I believe) 30 on the front page, and 30 more on the next. If there are, say, 5 on the front page that are topics you don't care about, then skip over them. It's really not hard to just drop your eyes down a line to the next one.

• by matt_s on 4/29/20, 3:31 PM

  There has been a shift in the last few years where more "news" like content gets on HN that is not really hacker/startup focused. To me, the "Hacker" in HN is in the sense of engineering culture around making things, not just "technology".

  In my opinion topics that are related to tech don't qualify as hacker news. Political topics certainly don't have anything really to do with hacker news.

• by some_furry on 4/29/20, 3:19 PM

  > Repeat after me: all technical problems of sufficient scope or impact are actually political problems first.

  From https://twitter.com/Dymaxion/status/464645883100139521

  It's difficult (if not impossible) to divorce some political topics from technology.

  Trying to neutralize political discussion is effectively a permanent ceasefire: It sides with the status quo (whatever that status quo might be) while maintaining the illusion of being impartial, but is anything but.

  That being said! A lot of political discussion on HN isn't interesting and, from my understanding of the guidelines, doesn't belong here.

• by tmaly on 4/29/20, 8:42 PM

  I understand your question. My observations and experience on trying to comment on such posts have left a sour taste in my mouth.

  Political posts on HN are a honeypot designed to lure in people with different views. The moment you post something that does not jive with the herd you get down voted.

  It does not matter if you are making a valid point.

• by yamrzou on 4/30/20, 9:35 PM

  HN is for "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity".

  The discussions around political content, when they are reasonable and civil, can be quite interesting.