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Common tactic here on HN is to call politics you disagree with "political." I was even banned for this reason: for leaving "political" comments in political thr

Common tactic here on HN is to call politics you disagree with "political." I was even banned for this reason: for leaving "political" comments in political threads. Why not just be honest about it being different from your politics? One way to prevent all "flamewars" is to prevent all opinions that can be deemed offensive - and doesn't a quick appraisal of history reveal the issues with this oppressive strategy? Even in tech companies, you silence opposing opinions about how a technology should work and you potentially ruin the company. I've seen this in startups many times - the problems that we read about after a startup has failed were raised early on by certain members, often who were ignored, fired, and ridiculed for having such opinions.

dang 8y ago
It's a common tactic to declaim grandiloquently about why one was banned but never supply the links so people could make up their own minds (https://hn.algolia.com/?query=linkless%20martyr&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=linkless%20martyr&sort=byDate&...). If we were really as arbitrary as you claim (edit: or whatever it is you claim), the pattern would be the opposite: people would be rushing to post their links, revealing how badly they were treated. You were banned for posting things like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17491521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17491521 and ignoring our requests to stop. Any fair-minded reader can see that comments like "who brainwashed you bro" violate the site guidelines independently of your political views. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- pokemongoaway 8y ago
  I'm not claiming that it is arbitrary; quite the contrary. There is a very narrow range of acceptable views on HN - and your reply only underscores that fact. People call posts "political" in a political thread when they disagree - and rarely feel the need to present evidence for their own views. And since you brought it up - in a manor so truncated - that post of mine that got me banned was 90% about how biological gender does exist. This emphasizes my point about how narrow the range of acceptable opinions are here on HN. None of the words composing the portion that you've quoted are even mean or offensive - and yes, I was implying that propaganda must be used to make someone argue so confidently without evidence against what even establishment biologists overwhelmingly believe (that biological gender exists). And furthermore, since you bring it up, another post of mine on a similarly "political" topic was met with with this supportive reply: "Speaking as a gay minority, I totally agree with your comment." So within the code of conduct, I assume you are referring to, "Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." I started off sarcastically, but you ignore the rest of my post which is substantive. The comment I replied to began with the words, "race does not exist." If you search on scholar.google.com for the terms 'race' and 'biological' you get 2,640,000 results. And is it really so radical that I met a comment dismissive of the discussion within 2,640,000 peer-reviewed search results with sarcasm? But admins decided to cherry pick support or lack thereof for my comments, and then censored me. I don't know if this will be seen either since I am shadow banned - and the commenter who alerted me to the fact that I was shadow banned was then banned as well (for making that comment). After being banned I Googled for other people banned from HN from posting outside of the acceptable range of opinions and I found a load of them - and I don't think HN audience would appreciate that you're deciding to follow this censorship tread that we're seeing on YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, and many more. HN is framed as a more open community, but my experience here reveals a safe-space of increasing proportions.
  - dang 8y ago
    You were banned, or rather your troll account was banned, because of a long history of posting crappy comments (by the standards of the site guidelines, which include no political criteria) and ignoring our multiple requests to stop. It's just that simple, and anyone who bothers going back through the history can see it. It's not uncommon for people who were banned to fancy themselves a political dissident and go on about how repressed they are. But the truth is less glamorous: moderation is janitorial work, and the stakes are trivially low. I'm confident that the HN community supports how we sweep the barn, because if they didn't, we'd never hear the end of it. And what we see is just the opposite: the community flags comments like these ones, from all political quarters. Even your comment upthread was flagged after I unkilled it, so I had to unkill it again.
    - shawn 8y ago
      the stakes are trivially low. For you.

dang 8y ago

It's a common tactic to declaim grandiloquently about why one was banned but never supply the links so people could make up their own minds (https://hn.algolia.com/?query=linkless%20martyr&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=linkless%20martyr&sort=byDate&...). If we were really as arbitrary as you claim (edit: or whatever it is you claim), the pattern would be the opposite: people would be rushing to post their links, revealing how badly they were treated. You were banned for posting things like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17491521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17491521 and ignoring our requests to stop. Any fair-minded reader can see that comments like "who brainwashed you bro" violate the site guidelines independently of your political views. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

pokemongoaway 8y ago
I'm not claiming that it is arbitrary; quite the contrary. There is a very narrow range of acceptable views on HN - and your reply only underscores that fact. People call posts "political" in a political thread when they disagree - and rarely feel the need to present evidence for their own views. And since you brought it up - in a manor so truncated - that post of mine that got me banned was 90% about how biological gender does exist. This emphasizes my point about how narrow the range of acceptable opinions are here on HN. None of the words composing the portion that you've quoted are even mean or offensive - and yes, I was implying that propaganda must be used to make someone argue so confidently without evidence against what even establishment biologists overwhelmingly believe (that biological gender exists). And furthermore, since you bring it up, another post of mine on a similarly "political" topic was met with with this supportive reply: "Speaking as a gay minority, I totally agree with your comment." So within the code of conduct, I assume you are referring to, "Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." I started off sarcastically, but you ignore the rest of my post which is substantive. The comment I replied to began with the words, "race does not exist." If you search on scholar.google.com for the terms 'race' and 'biological' you get 2,640,000 results. And is it really so radical that I met a comment dismissive of the discussion within 2,640,000 peer-reviewed search results with sarcasm? But admins decided to cherry pick support or lack thereof for my comments, and then censored me. I don't know if this will be seen either since I am shadow banned - and the commenter who alerted me to the fact that I was shadow banned was then banned as well (for making that comment). After being banned I Googled for other people banned from HN from posting outside of the acceptable range of opinions and I found a load of them - and I don't think HN audience would appreciate that you're deciding to follow this censorship tread that we're seeing on YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, and many more. HN is framed as a more open community, but my experience here reveals a safe-space of increasing proportions.
- dang 8y ago
  You were banned, or rather your troll account was banned, because of a long history of posting crappy comments (by the standards of the site guidelines, which include no political criteria) and ignoring our multiple requests to stop. It's just that simple, and anyone who bothers going back through the history can see it. It's not uncommon for people who were banned to fancy themselves a political dissident and go on about how repressed they are. But the truth is less glamorous: moderation is janitorial work, and the stakes are trivially low. I'm confident that the HN community supports how we sweep the barn, because if they didn't, we'd never hear the end of it. And what we see is just the opposite: the community flags comments like these ones, from all political quarters. Even your comment upthread was flagged after I unkilled it, so I had to unkill it again.
  - shawn 8y ago
    the stakes are trivially low. For you.