from Hacker News

I think I’m done with HN

by smacktoward on 6/24/20, 2:35 AM with 54 comments

• by dang on 6/24/20, 7:00 AM

  > while any mention of the fate of George Floyd and so many others who have suffered and died at the hands of police gets aggressively removed from discussion

  That's not even close to true—not by orders of magnitude. This seems like a classic of the notice-dislike bias (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...): that is, you've seen things that you didn't like in one discussion and weighted it more heavily than everything else, including the by-far-most-discussed theme of the last month.

  That bias is so powerful that I'm not sure I've seen even a single counterexample, and it seems to make objective assessment impossible. I don't know what to do about it. We can't remove everything that somebody dislikes—there would be nothing left—but the presence of material that people dislike makes them draw extremely distorted conclusions. I believe this is an outcome of HN being a non-siloed site. Most other places on the internet, you choose your silo so you're surrounded by friendly views and don't encounter so many nasty things. Here, everyone's in one silo and it creates a shock experience. This leads people to dramatically false conclusions, but it doesn't matter because they feel intensely true. I wrote about this recently here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.

• by andrewxdiamond on 6/24/20, 3:50 AM

  I am pretty confused. What kindof discussion is expected? Searching for "police" or "BLM" on the site brings up many heavily commented threads.

  Do they know the site has a search function? I didn't for a while. There's a search box on the bottom of the page

• by asveikau on 6/24/20, 3:23 AM

  On some of those peak days of BLM protests, I came on here and it was like the whole thing wasn't happening. It did seem strange.

  If nothing else people here should stop pretending they're above the zeitgeist. How many others remember the slashdot threads on 9/11, for example? This is a big defining moment in our times worth more conscious observance. Tech cares too.

• by HeyZuess on 6/24/20, 5:17 AM

  As someone who is not American, the BLM issues while important are not really something which I see needing to dominate every form of media I consume, especially those dedicated to more technology related issues.

  It is also nice to have a broad range of topics which are intellectual based also. Given the emotional nature of the protests, it wouldn't be surprising that if such a topic was left unmoderated it would lead to a lot of mirrored content and information.

• by legohead on 6/24/20, 3:40 AM

  There are plenty of appropriate places to talk about BLM and other world events. Just because the community here may not be focused on it doesn't make it a bad community. Frankly, when sociological discussions show up here it's kind of awkward.

• by azhu on 6/24/20, 3:41 AM

  As a younger person, I agree, it is very disappointing. I would've guessed YC more prescient than to not realize there are tectonic cultural shifts heavily worth deep discussion happening.

  I've noticed that sometimes, when people rise through ranks or otherwise mature in the world of business, they become disconnected from regular humanity and forget that emotions are real signals.

• by yongjik on 6/24/20, 3:56 AM

  Not sure why anybody's upset that HN didn't have much discussion on, above anything, George Floyd. HN discourages (and always discouraged) "me too" style remarks, like "Oh that's awful", "that's outrageous", or "that's gross injustice!" But exactly what other reasonable opinions are available here?

  I mean, would you want to see people discussing here whether Derek Chauvin was justified in killing George Floyd? Because I don't.

• by kangnkodos on 6/24/20, 3:22 PM

  I don't think there are enough threads on HN saying that vegans are right, and evil egg-eating vegetarians are wrong. Therefore, I have concluded that HN is a den of evil egg eaters. I just don't feel safe reading opinions of people who have their moral compass compromised in this way.

  So I think I too am done with HN.

• by aiscapehumanity on 6/24/20, 3:48 AM

  Done with caring about comments here that aren't links to resources. Karma system is dysfunctional, and socialization here isn't too meaningful coupled with the guidelines. I'm about to lose points, but as far as I am concerned real community here is dead. But I respect the decision to leave.

• by free_rms on 6/24/20, 3:36 AM

  There's been about a thread a day about BLM. There's been one thread, one day about Scott Alexander.

• by _y5hn on 6/24/20, 5:07 AM

  Probably upset mods are effective, and can't be bothered to search or use https://hckrnews.com/

• by Antoninus on 6/24/20, 6:05 AM

  Flag this accordingly.

• by s9w on 6/24/20, 3:25 AM

  "And I think I’m done with it" and posts on HN. This topic was discussed to death - right now the story right under this is another tech company yielding to the speech police mob by doing another master branch rename. This topic has suffocated anything of relevance in the last weeks.

• by cmdshiftf4 on 6/24/20, 3:51 AM

  > Appeal to authority with internet points

  > Moan that HN won't support you spilling your politics that already fill your twitter feed over into the site, despite many alternatives existing

  > Recognize it's a free site and it can do what it wants

  > Assert it's wrong, and doing wrong, by disagreeing with you, that voice of karma-provided authority

  > Post your Twitter rant to HN for attention

  > HN democratically removes your rant

  > Whimper on Twitter that HN, the site you're apparently done with, aren't facilitating your anti-HN rants, implicitly encouraging your following to do some bandwagoning

  God only knows what drama this person would be capable of if HN kowtowed and facilitated their self-approved topics for discussion.

  Why ask for Reddit 2.0 when you can just stick to Reddit.com?

• by akvadrako on 6/24/20, 7:24 AM

  I see the opposite; I think there are too many posts and comments about BLM. They are also heavily skewed in support of the movement, so anything skeptical gets flagged/downvoted.

  It seems like this user demands a silo where his views are not questioned. Certainly HN is better without people like that.

• by thechosenblerd on 6/24/20, 3:40 AM

  That's the unfortunate reality of the tech community and really privilege itself. It's uncomfortable to acknowledge the misfortunes of others. It's a sad norm of American culture, especially when it pertains to black people.

• by badrabbit on 6/24/20, 3:48 AM

  Oh wow, this made it to the front page and it just got flagged! I was going to say how i really don't care about mainstream news topics worming their way to HN but man, this is crazy. I understand downvotes and bans but flagging this and shadowbans are hitting below the belt.

  Is this site for the intellectually dishonest? If not this b.s. needs to stop. How many "I quit facebook" posts make it to the front page all the time? How many social activism related topics make it to the front page. Counter argument to those who say it's not relevant: technology made these protests possible and technlogy is where the fight is happening right now.

  I hope the moderator team (@dang) pays attention to this.