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What does that tell us? That HN trends pessimistic? That the HN audience is under-employed? Or something else?
by Stryder 7y ago
What does that tell us? That HN trends pessimistic? That the HN audience is under-employed? Or something else?
- bmmayer1 7y agoI may be reading in between the lines but I believe OP's point is that HN leans more liberal which in today's political climate means more receptive of negative economic news (thus necessitating more intervention / change of government control) rather than positive economic news. But again this could be way off base.
- taiwanboy 7y agoDing ding :) Almost....anti-America if you will.
- Lendal 7y agoIs it more "pro-American" then to cover up negative indicators? People consume weather reports to know if it's going to rain. People consume traffic reports to see where the accidents are. People consume news for the negative indicators. That's not anti-American. That's human.
- taiwanboy 7y agoIn the ideal world, both posts would be on the front page. No echo chamber. Being able to hold opposing thoughts in ones head. Etc etc
- howard941 7y agoOne HN user proudly posted that he flags everything from guardian.co.uk. When the flag is liberally stroked as a content don't-like/payback button instead of a content spammy or obviously not interesting to tech people you're bound to get these asymmetric presentations.
- cwperkins 7y agoIt’s actually getting quite annoying. Reddit started off with r/programming being by far the largest community. It’s pretty obvious to see how it has drifted with time. I see the same phenomena happen to HN and I come here for tech news. I’d like them to have a subHN for economic news for those that want it. I believe datatau (announces on HN a few years ago) attempted to solve this. I get that people here respect each other’s opinions since we are like minded tech folk, but I’d really rather it was separated.
- nkassis 7y agoPretty normal progression for technical news sites to go through that process as they grow. It's happen to every other tech site before it. But HN always had economic news. It started as a news site for the startup community and so economic news always fit in in my view.
- icebraining 7y agoThere's no drift. If you look at the submissions by pg himself (the creator of the site), who stopped years ago, more often than not they weren't "tech news": https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=pg https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=pg
- Stryder 7y agoYou can just say that outright next time. It's an anonymous internet forum so it's really not a big deal, and it's very hard to guess what you mean if you aren't clear about it.
- mberning 7y agoYou are 100% correct. I would even expand it to say that it is very anti-western and frequently anti-capitalist (which is insane given the raison d'être of this site). Anything that paints the US or western culture in a negative light will flourish, meanwhile anything that disagrees with this orthodoxy is flagged to hell.
- dang 7y agoThese perceptions are entirely in the eye of the beholder. People with the opposite views to yours see HN in precisely the opposite way, and are just as indignant about it.
- mberning 7y agoI feel bad for you. Every single one of the comments you have ever made on my posts is some sort of lazy dismissal. I’m sure you get it from all sides and have a truly miserable task, so I can forgive your trite canned responses. The bias and censorship on HN is a perception, and a perception which happens to be accurate. I would love to “prove it with data” but I have more productive uses for my time than painstakingly collecting information on the disastrous stewardship of an aging internet forum. I am doubtful that many could be convinced of these things anyway, regardless of compelling data or stirring rhetoric. That being said, the clear moderation biases on HN have been noted on certain stories by many people which are often conveniently flagged and memory holed. You pick and choose, or perhaps you allow the flag brigades to pick and choose which stories stay up and get taken down. A great example in recent memory was the James Damore Google memo controversy. Numerous articles and blog posts with hundreds of points and comments were flagged to hell until suddenly a story with the correct narrative floated to the top of HN and stayed there for hours. Maybe that was the moderation team, or maybe it was the community. Either way, to claim that that episode was given a fair and even handed treatment on this site is complete BS. And there are many other similar examples over the years.
- dang 7y agoThe people on the other side of that controversy have the opposite opinion, and are just as sure of it as you are. The truth is that these narratives are all made up, based on however what people notice passes through whatever filters they have. That's also why these digressions are so tedious—they're self-referential projections.
- brbrodude 7y agoOTOH, one can argue that one who's critical is also the most helpful or caring lol. My comments that expose some 'against the system' stuff always end up getting downvoted tho(actually, at first they get some ups, but then are slowly shot down), so my view always was a "techie" thing... Ppl that would like some adjustments but most aren't radicals. Another possibility is since here there's more informed ppl from very different places, a lot will make sure to point out weird stuff in American debate, since we all end up getting exposed to it but from a different vantage point.
- rootusrootus 7y agoHN may lean liberal, but that would be primarily because half the commenters here are from western Europe, where even the conservative politics are frequently liberal by US standards.
- rc_kas 7y agoPartially. Also partially because HN users are younger, and younger people tend to hate Republican ideas.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoYounger and on the coast. West of I95 and East of I5 you'll find plenty of young people who may find certain social policy points dated but generally agree with republican ideas. Actually, there was an article on the front page earlier today talking about this phenomenon (social filter bubbles) but it's long gone because everyone was complaining it was a dupe. Go figure.
- Stryder 7y agoInteresting. Thanks, I didn't go there at all and I believe ambiguous statements like these create a lot of the misunderstanding that we see in today's political climate.
- akhilcacharya 7y agoYou don't need economic pessimism to make the case for change in government. The malice and corruption in the executive branch makes the case on its own.
- the_mitsuhiko 7y agoOr just that one contains more information than the other. That the US economy is doing fine is not exactly news.