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Ask HN: Moratorium on threads related to the culture wars and identity politics
The Hacker News guidelines permit "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity".
Now, even HN qualifies what isn't suitable for political stories: "Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon." Rest assured, most such stories do not satisfy this criterion, or wear off their novelty all too quickly.
Be it the Millennials whose whining will immanentize the eschaton, the white heterosexual males and their original sin of mercantilism and colonialism, the feminists and Cultural Marxists who want to usurp Western values (whatever they are this month)... it is all grinding.
The chief complaint, of course, is that threads on this subject are devoid of any value pertaining to debate. They instead serve as hubs for signaling normative dispositions. The inevitable result of such vacuous posturing is attrition. Discussions grow ever more primordial, threads on the subject increase and these elements spill over to other threads. It is not uncommon now for technical threads to derail into aesthetic tangents (i.e. Coq). Everyone wants to be the greatest victim and the greatest receiver of sympathy. No one actually cares about the utility or disutility of people. They only care that everyone know how righteous they are.
Many of you will object on the basis of free speech. But there is no free speech on private property. Certainly, the property owner may implicitly consent to ideological dissemination on their property. They may even explicitly have easement or other contract permitting nonpossessory use that includes the right to disseminate ideology, or otherwise, speech. The property owner's rights ultimately override yours, and so you have no right to demand anything (neither do I, obviously). As such, the owner exercises all final discretion.
Note that I do not expect any such moratorium to actually take place. I merely wanted to counterbalance things by expressing a dissenting view.
- nikdaheratik 11y agoThe best thing you can do is not call for some overarching policy banning whatever annoys you (politics, culture war, lame memes) but simply downvote, make constructive comments about how this is a waste of time, or just ignore those submissions. This sort of thing tends to ebb and flow with election cycles, especially for U.S. based commenters. It's going to get more annoying as the next year goes on, but for whatever reason people feel the need to share their opinions on this more during important elections (whether the majority of people consider it worth reading or not). IMO, silent tolerance (up to a point) is more discouraging than engaging with the nonsense as it gives them nothing to push back against. I'm also reminded of this post of an IRC chat room where (apparently) one person is arguing with themselves in an otherwise empty room about some kind of political point. While you may want to believe you are engaging with a worthwhile opponent, you could be talking to that person, and you just don't know it.
- GregBuchholz 11y ago(completely off topic) >But there is no free speech on private property. You are right. But you know what drive proponents of free speech batty? When people don't understand the philosophical underpinnings of why we advocate for free speech. And this happens all the time on HN. Hopefully, this is because of all the non-U.S. visitors that come to this site. For those, a little explanation. We come from a culture of free speech. We think it is good, and we are the descendants of people who thought it was good. We were taught that it was good from when we were small children. Our experiences are that busybodies and tyrants are the ones who push for censorship and work in the shadows. And those are some of the reasons why freedom of speech is enshrined in our constitution. We do not think: because it is in the constitution, therefore it is good. So to us, it is not like deciding to drive on the left or the right side of the street. Each being perfectly reasonable, and which ever way they do it where you live is an accident of fate. And we do not think that free speech is only reserved for political topics, or when talking to governmental officials. When someone starts to mention legal technicalities of free speech, it makes me want to barf on their shoes, because they are completely missing the point. We grew up with it as a minimum expectation of decency. A fundamental human right. Slaves and servants don't have the luxury of free speech. Demand more of yourself and your fellow citizens. </soap-box>
- SamReidHughes 11y agoWhat makes you think your view is dissenting? It sounds quite aligned with everything you hear from the HN cabal. Edit: I mean, sometimes a story slips through, and a subthread happens, but generally it feels like there's a big hard clamp on that. Maybe I'm projecting.
- Mz 11y agoThey already apply penalties to things like this that they view as "insubstantive". This helps keep it off the front page. It also sometimes penalizes more thoughtful items that defy the sterotype and are aimed at trying to get a real discussion going. The system works as is. We don't need a sweeping moratorium. That would go bad places. Flag or downvote and move on. Give more of your energy to engaging constructively with items you see more value in, less to the things you find tedious. Your desire to completely ban something so you don't have to make any effort to mentally filter out certain types of things is the kind of position that goes very unhealthy places.
- hacknat 11y agoI agree with your sentiment, though I feel you could have been a bit more terse. However, I agree with SamReidHughes, is this really that much of a problem? Also, "The chief complaint..."? Are you representing more than your own opinion here?