5 ms·

agree with you. The issue with this is that anything even close to a little bit controversial will start to go down faster. As a result, we will end up with cl

agree with you. The issue with this is that anything even close to a little bit controversial will start to go down faster. As a result, we will end up with closely selected, safe, politically correct article on the main page where debate can be kept to a minimal on safe topics.

emerongi 8y ago
Maybe an option would be to have a setting to automatically hide "flame wars" if the user does not wish to see those? We already have the manual "hide", but this would hide some posts automatically. I do agree that this automatic de-ranking as soon as a post is considered to be controversial is unexpected and not a feature I like.
IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
Assuming today’s typical use of “politically correct”, it really works in the opposite. I. e. stories about racism or sexism in the tech industry have almost no chance of reaching this audience, that could actually have the power to effect change. Meanwhile, stories and comments cynically portaying all of the “mainstream media” as corrupt, biased, and incompetent routinely rise to the top because that POV is now almost universally seen as uncontroversial fact. Explicit right-wing drivel like overt racism have no chance, thankfully. But having written a tech & politics column for 15 years in my native country, I can read my old stuff and see how my politics have developed. And while I have moved a bit on issues like diversity, I feel the tech community has moved somewhat in the opposite direction, or perhaps towards a sort of cynical, self-focused sort of populism. To use one example that’s almost purely about technology: the GPL used to have many proponents in the slashdot era. These days, anything not MIT licensed is quickly derided as “socialism” or “against freedom”. The general understanding of issues also seems to have gone downhill. It appears, for example, that very people even understand the motivation behind GPL 3.0.

emerongi 8y ago

Maybe an option would be to have a setting to automatically hide "flame wars" if the user does not wish to see those? We already have the manual "hide", but this would hide some posts automatically. I do agree that this automatic de-ranking as soon as a post is considered to be controversial is unexpected and not a feature I like.

IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago

Assuming today’s typical use of “politically correct”, it really works in the opposite. I. e. stories about racism or sexism in the tech industry have almost no chance of reaching this audience, that could actually have the power to effect change. Meanwhile, stories and comments cynically portaying all of the “mainstream media” as corrupt, biased, and incompetent routinely rise to the top because that POV is now almost universally seen as uncontroversial fact. Explicit right-wing drivel like overt racism have no chance, thankfully. But having written a tech & politics column for 15 years in my native country, I can read my old stuff and see how my politics have developed. And while I have moved a bit on issues like diversity, I feel the tech community has moved somewhat in the opposite direction, or perhaps towards a sort of cynical, self-focused sort of populism. To use one example that’s almost purely about technology: the GPL used to have many proponents in the slashdot era. These days, anything not MIT licensed is quickly derided as “socialism” or “against freedom”. The general understanding of issues also seems to have gone downhill. It appears, for example, that very people even understand the motivation behind GPL 3.0.