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This is actually my sole complaint with HN. I love the community and I understand where the moderators are coming from, but I feel that it's important to point

This is actually my sole complaint with HN. I love the community and I understand where the moderators are coming from, but I feel that it's important to point out that the position of "keep politics out of $X" is the purest expression of privilege, and in general is an attitude that embraces the status quo, no matter how horrifying it might be for the unprivileged. I'm not saying HN should allow ALL political discussion, but when technological issues inevitably and undeniably involve politics, either by influencing or being influenced, it seems a little cowardly that the general attitude of HN is "just don't discuss it" when the it in that case is core to the issue at hand, even if it happens to be political.

jonathanwallace 7y ago
Politics, IMHO, are about applied relationship and applied power. Ignoring the discussion of both relationships and power leads to an anemic understanding of freedom and what it takes to enable it which leaves us unbalanced and brittle as a civil society. The exercise of this privilege is a systemic, cultural mistake and the tendency of conversations to often devolve into tribalism highlights our lack of sophistication and maturity when it comes to these topics.
- 481092 7y ago
  You could say the same of knowledge also as it is a power and one applied and accrued by relationship; by what material one reads, by whom and from which source it is linked from and to. Academics of various groups tend to have their own sort of tribalism. I think the mods came to the correct conclusion that politics, although annoying as hell sometimes, is a fabric of society which is nigh impossible to shed when discussing just about anything.
afarrell 7y ago
Something can be both an expression of privilege and a very good idea. Example: The advice to get at least 8 hours of sleep at a regular time each night. This reflects: - the economic privilege of not needing to do irregular shift work - not having a chronic disease which interrupts sleep - not being a parent - having a regular place to sleep at all. However, it is still a good idea for one’s physical and mental health. Likewise, a community might reasonably decide that certain political discussions are too acrimonious to have productively. Even if this decision reflects privilege, it might be the only decision under which the community could survive without rupturing. I feel inclined to agree with your second paragraph, but just don’t know if such discussions are actually productive.
- FussyZeus 7y ago
  Well, as I said, it shouldn't be ALWAYS allowed, otherwise you have that sect of people who bring up the politics inherent in anything, and while it's true and important, it's not what HN is about or should be about. BUT, and this is a big but here, there are a small number of discussions on HN where it can be argued that the politics involved in an issue are more important than the technology. Or, that the technology involved is actively shaping the politics related to it. Or, that the politics of those building the technology are informing the technology. And so on. And I feel like the attitude here is one mirrored strongly in the tech industry at large, that somehow by not discussing it openly, we avoid the stains and the ugly realities of the situations we're involved in, and I'm sorry but that's just not true. Simply refusing to discuss the political angles of what we all do doesn't mean we're above it or beyond it, we're simply ignoring it, and ignoring politics can have catastrophic consequences.
  - rhacker 7y ago
    Like 1st day of month are the hiring threads... what about on the 15th we have a very focused political debate - and no other threads are allowed to have it. I definitely agree that tech lately is so intertwined with politics.
    - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
      What happens if on the 16th Bloomberg announces that all organizers of the protests at Google have left or been fired? What happens if on the 17th, during a big ML conference, a prominent computer vision scientist was able to conclusively prove that x% of current facial datasets are majority white male and that this results in y% increase of false positive rates when identifying nonwhites as criminals? What happens if on the 19th there is a report delivered by a special UN comissioned research group that issues that global warming has destroyed coral reefs in a way such that they will never recover? What happens if on the 25th it is definitively revealed through a security report that voting machines were actively hacked to detect if the voter was registered female and made them vote for $party? What happens if on the 1st Reuters publishes a investigative piece that explores how Microsoft has been delivering accurate censorship algorithms to China and the specific people behind it? What happens if on the 12th a NIH paper is published unveiling definitive brain architecture differences between male, female, and nonbinary brains due to an innovative computer vision collaboration in MIT? What happens if on the 14th a scientist who happens to be an assigned-female-at-birth nonbinary latin american publishes the definitive proof that P != NP? Also, this researcher takes 'they' pronouns, so commentors can either use "she" or "they" and both are political statements? (Or is it inappropriate to talk about the researcher and their/her work to discover this at all?) That is to say- in the article, it was discovered that "what is political debate" turned out to itself be a political debate, because some things are obviously political, and other things are political just by existing and referring to it.
ideasRgood 7y ago
I find legitimate questions that contradict the mods ideas are flagged. Are there better sites? This one is popular but not good.
lobotryas 7y ago
Not all places need to support discussion of politics. If you want to discuss the intersection of tech and politics you have many options to go to without bringing that stuff here.
- pluma 7y ago
  Everything is political. HN generally bans explicitly political opinion pieces, articles with overt political statements and articles primarily covering current political affairs (e.g. articles about something a US politician said). But even what is or isn't "political" in this sense is again down to the unstated biases of the moderators (e.g. what if the US politician said something about a well-known tech company). A lot of articles that make the cut tend to be overtly about economics, but those are still extremely political. Universal basic income is political, climate change is political, how companies treat their employees is political, the "sharing economy" is political. HN isn't free of politics, HN is centrist (with a neo-liberal bias, i.e. anti-regulation, pro-market). And centrism isn't an ideology, it's merely a compromise relative to wherever the current Overton window is. Saying you don't want to talk about politics riles people up because in order to think of something you talk about as "non-political" requires you to be considerably aloof and far removed from the real-world impacts. And for completeness sake: yes, even saying "when a company makes an economical decision that negatively impacts people that's not political" is political because it presupposes a laissez-faire capitalist worldview where the Friedman doctrine is unquestioned. (Hopefully we don't need to talk about why any pretenses of a "meritocracy" or "only hiring the best" is political as these specters should have been cast out of most tech forums at this point)
  - wvenable 7y ago
    > Everything is political. This is absolutely not true. The best postings on hacker news are cool technical stuff that doesn't have an ounce of political. And yes, there are plenty of articles with a political lean but they are really the least interesting ones here because you can read those anywhere else. I'd much rather read about the guy who built his own video card than what (non-technical) thing Uber is doing this week.
jsperson 7y ago
If there's one privilege that I will never feel guilty about taking advantage of, it's the ability to listen to and engage in discussions with folks smarter than I am with the overloaded concept of political belief removed.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Imagine how much better the experience of listening and engaging in discussions with those who are qualified as not simply smarter than you, but who have different lived experience, values, and/or models for ordering the Universe?
  - jsperson 7y ago
    Your implication seems to be that we don't have that - I disagree. HN is full of folks with different backgrounds. One particular category of topics is moderated - politics. There's massive inclusion of different lived experiences etc. In other forums I've found political discussions to be particularly irrational. The topic is just so fundamentally emotional that folks lose objectivity. You can't argue with results. The comments on this site are superb. I probably read the comments 3x more than I read the base articles. Take a look at the comments on MSNBC, Fox News, or even the Washington Post. It's shrill emotional blather.
    - new2628 7y ago
      I agree 100% with what you say but have to point out that your last "even" is a small example of how politics creeps in. In short, what often happens is that statements that are highly opinion-based are presented as broadly-agreed-upon facts. EDIT: to be clear, I don't think you did it intentionally, and it was a minor thing, I just found it amusing to spot it. EDIT2: to be even clearer, I'm referring to the implied fact that WP commenters are better-informed than the other two groups (on which I don't have a strong opinion).
    - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
      " The comments on this site are superb. " I would agree with this... with caveat. The comments on this site are superb when discussing highly technical topics within the STEM sphere. However, the comments here tend to trail off to not much more insightful than average population for the following: * Lifestyle posts (keto diets, IF, cold therapy, supplements, probiotics...) * Drugs (microdosing LSD, ketamine therapy...) * "Identity" politics (female-in-tech topics become a hotbed of debate, much of it not insightful) * Nuances in economics or international affairs At least IMO unless you can broadly anticipate that it's a subject that most commentors have significant education on, the discussion generally falls to either spitballing or anecdotes, neither of which are more insightful than a general public.
chuckgreenman 7y ago
There's a time and place for that stuff though, if all of a sudden you start bringing up politics during your local Arduino project meetup you can't be surprised if they stop inviting you. Hacker News sort of splits between technology and politics so drawing a line is a bit tricky.
dredmorbius 7y ago
Question: who does a policy of "no political discussion" most favour? The empowered, or the disempowered?
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  >Question: who does a policy of "no political discussion" most favour? How about people who are sick of the silly ass and mostly irrelevant toxic political bullshit lizard men and their PR firms use to drum up electoral turnout? I'm here for the 1337 h4x0rz, not what some blue haired SRE ops ding dong or buzzcut f35 engineer thinks about Todays Issues as defined on TV. Anyway, hats off to sctb and dang, who do a great job despite the wanking that is allowed on here.
- spunker540 7y ago
  I don’t think it particularly favors either. Neither benefit from pro-life/pro-choice debates on HN.
tomp 7y ago
The idea isn't that political discussions are unwelcome, or worthless... Rather, it's that people (and comments) are much more emotional, knee-jerk, irrational, etc. - there is barely any actual discussion going on, it's mostly name-calling, strawman arguments or moral/value discussion that basically amount to "I'm good; you're evil" (e.g. both sides of pro-life vs pro-choice debate). AFAIK noone has figured out how to have a substantial political discussion, at scale. Until that problem is solved, it makes sense to just tune it out a bit.
raxxorrax 7y ago
While you might have a point, I don't see many examples where people advocating the political to speak "truth to power". What I see is "be mindful with controversial opinions that could affect corporate sensibilities" and I do believe many people share this point of view. Who do you think are these unprivileged people you are speaking off anyway and what do you think would hinder them at participation?
icebraining 7y ago
I don't see that attitude in HN at all. There are those who wish to see fewer (or none) political discussions, but their wishes don't prevail. Hence the aforementioned "Detox Week", which didn't even last a week.
renlo 7y ago
There are other forums* where people can discuss those things (*as in, the word forum, not necessarily “internet forums”). It’s refreshing to have a medium like Hacker News where technology news can be discussed without the polemics endemic to other message boards.
mrfredward 7y ago
>...the position of "keep politics out of $X" is the purest expression of privilege, and in general is an attitude that embraces the status quo, no matter how horrifying it might be for the unprivileged. Is there evidence that arguing politics over the internet is causing a net improvement in the world? I'm inclined to think political discussions on social media are causing political dysfunction, not fixing it.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> I'm not saying HN should allow ALL political discussion, but when technological issues inevitably and undeniably involve politics, either by influencing or being influenced, it seems a little cowardly that the general attitude of HN is "just don't discuss it" when the it in that case is core to the issue at hand, even if it happens to be political. HN allows (and frequently features) political discussion in those contexts, so while I agree that it would be a problem if your description was accurate, I can't agree that the description is accurate.

jonathanwallace 7y ago

Politics, IMHO, are about applied relationship and applied power. Ignoring the discussion of both relationships and power leads to an anemic understanding of freedom and what it takes to enable it which leaves us unbalanced and brittle as a civil society. The exercise of this privilege is a systemic, cultural mistake and the tendency of conversations to often devolve into tribalism highlights our lack of sophistication and maturity when it comes to these topics.

481092 7y ago
You could say the same of knowledge also as it is a power and one applied and accrued by relationship; by what material one reads, by whom and from which source it is linked from and to. Academics of various groups tend to have their own sort of tribalism. I think the mods came to the correct conclusion that politics, although annoying as hell sometimes, is a fabric of society which is nigh impossible to shed when discussing just about anything.

afarrell 7y ago

Something can be both an expression of privilege and a very good idea. Example: The advice to get at least 8 hours of sleep at a regular time each night. This reflects: - the economic privilege of not needing to do irregular shift work - not having a chronic disease which interrupts sleep - not being a parent - having a regular place to sleep at all. However, it is still a good idea for one’s physical and mental health. Likewise, a community might reasonably decide that certain political discussions are too acrimonious to have productively. Even if this decision reflects privilege, it might be the only decision under which the community could survive without rupturing. I feel inclined to agree with your second paragraph, but just don’t know if such discussions are actually productive.

FussyZeus 7y ago
Well, as I said, it shouldn't be ALWAYS allowed, otherwise you have that sect of people who bring up the politics inherent in anything, and while it's true and important, it's not what HN is about or should be about. BUT, and this is a big but here, there are a small number of discussions on HN where it can be argued that the politics involved in an issue are more important than the technology. Or, that the technology involved is actively shaping the politics related to it. Or, that the politics of those building the technology are informing the technology. And so on. And I feel like the attitude here is one mirrored strongly in the tech industry at large, that somehow by not discussing it openly, we avoid the stains and the ugly realities of the situations we're involved in, and I'm sorry but that's just not true. Simply refusing to discuss the political angles of what we all do doesn't mean we're above it or beyond it, we're simply ignoring it, and ignoring politics can have catastrophic consequences.
- rhacker 7y ago
  Like 1st day of month are the hiring threads... what about on the 15th we have a very focused political debate - and no other threads are allowed to have it. I definitely agree that tech lately is so intertwined with politics.
  - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
    What happens if on the 16th Bloomberg announces that all organizers of the protests at Google have left or been fired? What happens if on the 17th, during a big ML conference, a prominent computer vision scientist was able to conclusively prove that x% of current facial datasets are majority white male and that this results in y% increase of false positive rates when identifying nonwhites as criminals? What happens if on the 19th there is a report delivered by a special UN comissioned research group that issues that global warming has destroyed coral reefs in a way such that they will never recover? What happens if on the 25th it is definitively revealed through a security report that voting machines were actively hacked to detect if the voter was registered female and made them vote for $party? What happens if on the 1st Reuters publishes a investigative piece that explores how Microsoft has been delivering accurate censorship algorithms to China and the specific people behind it? What happens if on the 12th a NIH paper is published unveiling definitive brain architecture differences between male, female, and nonbinary brains due to an innovative computer vision collaboration in MIT? What happens if on the 14th a scientist who happens to be an assigned-female-at-birth nonbinary latin american publishes the definitive proof that P != NP? Also, this researcher takes 'they' pronouns, so commentors can either use "she" or "they" and both are political statements? (Or is it inappropriate to talk about the researcher and their/her work to discover this at all?) That is to say- in the article, it was discovered that "what is political debate" turned out to itself be a political debate, because some things are obviously political, and other things are political just by existing and referring to it.

ideasRgood 7y ago

I find legitimate questions that contradict the mods ideas are flagged. Are there better sites? This one is popular but not good.

lobotryas 7y ago

Not all places need to support discussion of politics. If you want to discuss the intersection of tech and politics you have many options to go to without bringing that stuff here.

pluma 7y ago
Everything is political. HN generally bans explicitly political opinion pieces, articles with overt political statements and articles primarily covering current political affairs (e.g. articles about something a US politician said). But even what is or isn't "political" in this sense is again down to the unstated biases of the moderators (e.g. what if the US politician said something about a well-known tech company). A lot of articles that make the cut tend to be overtly about economics, but those are still extremely political. Universal basic income is political, climate change is political, how companies treat their employees is political, the "sharing economy" is political. HN isn't free of politics, HN is centrist (with a neo-liberal bias, i.e. anti-regulation, pro-market). And centrism isn't an ideology, it's merely a compromise relative to wherever the current Overton window is. Saying you don't want to talk about politics riles people up because in order to think of something you talk about as "non-political" requires you to be considerably aloof and far removed from the real-world impacts. And for completeness sake: yes, even saying "when a company makes an economical decision that negatively impacts people that's not political" is political because it presupposes a laissez-faire capitalist worldview where the Friedman doctrine is unquestioned. (Hopefully we don't need to talk about why any pretenses of a "meritocracy" or "only hiring the best" is political as these specters should have been cast out of most tech forums at this point)
- wvenable 7y ago
  > Everything is political. This is absolutely not true. The best postings on hacker news are cool technical stuff that doesn't have an ounce of political. And yes, there are plenty of articles with a political lean but they are really the least interesting ones here because you can read those anywhere else. I'd much rather read about the guy who built his own video card than what (non-technical) thing Uber is doing this week.

jsperson 7y ago

If there's one privilege that I will never feel guilty about taking advantage of, it's the ability to listen to and engage in discussions with folks smarter than I am with the overloaded concept of political belief removed.

dredmorbius 7y ago
Imagine how much better the experience of listening and engaging in discussions with those who are qualified as not simply smarter than you, but who have different lived experience, values, and/or models for ordering the Universe?
- jsperson 7y ago
  Your implication seems to be that we don't have that - I disagree. HN is full of folks with different backgrounds. One particular category of topics is moderated - politics. There's massive inclusion of different lived experiences etc. In other forums I've found political discussions to be particularly irrational. The topic is just so fundamentally emotional that folks lose objectivity. You can't argue with results. The comments on this site are superb. I probably read the comments 3x more than I read the base articles. Take a look at the comments on MSNBC, Fox News, or even the Washington Post. It's shrill emotional blather.
  - new2628 7y ago
    I agree 100% with what you say but have to point out that your last "even" is a small example of how politics creeps in. In short, what often happens is that statements that are highly opinion-based are presented as broadly-agreed-upon facts. EDIT: to be clear, I don't think you did it intentionally, and it was a minor thing, I just found it amusing to spot it. EDIT2: to be even clearer, I'm referring to the implied fact that WP commenters are better-informed than the other two groups (on which I don't have a strong opinion).
  - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
    " The comments on this site are superb. " I would agree with this... with caveat. The comments on this site are superb when discussing highly technical topics within the STEM sphere. However, the comments here tend to trail off to not much more insightful than average population for the following: * Lifestyle posts (keto diets, IF, cold therapy, supplements, probiotics...) * Drugs (microdosing LSD, ketamine therapy...) * "Identity" politics (female-in-tech topics become a hotbed of debate, much of it not insightful) * Nuances in economics or international affairs At least IMO unless you can broadly anticipate that it's a subject that most commentors have significant education on, the discussion generally falls to either spitballing or anecdotes, neither of which are more insightful than a general public.

chuckgreenman 7y ago

There's a time and place for that stuff though, if all of a sudden you start bringing up politics during your local Arduino project meetup you can't be surprised if they stop inviting you. Hacker News sort of splits between technology and politics so drawing a line is a bit tricky.

dredmorbius 7y ago

Question: who does a policy of "no political discussion" most favour? The empowered, or the disempowered?

scottlocklin 7y ago
>Question: who does a policy of "no political discussion" most favour? How about people who are sick of the silly ass and mostly irrelevant toxic political bullshit lizard men and their PR firms use to drum up electoral turnout? I'm here for the 1337 h4x0rz, not what some blue haired SRE ops ding dong or buzzcut f35 engineer thinks about Todays Issues as defined on TV. Anyway, hats off to sctb and dang, who do a great job despite the wanking that is allowed on here.
spunker540 7y ago
I don’t think it particularly favors either. Neither benefit from pro-life/pro-choice debates on HN.

tomp 7y ago

The idea isn't that political discussions are unwelcome, or worthless... Rather, it's that people (and comments) are much more emotional, knee-jerk, irrational, etc. - there is barely any actual discussion going on, it's mostly name-calling, strawman arguments or moral/value discussion that basically amount to "I'm good; you're evil" (e.g. both sides of pro-life vs pro-choice debate). AFAIK noone has figured out how to have a substantial political discussion, at scale. Until that problem is solved, it makes sense to just tune it out a bit.

raxxorrax 7y ago

While you might have a point, I don't see many examples where people advocating the political to speak "truth to power". What I see is "be mindful with controversial opinions that could affect corporate sensibilities" and I do believe many people share this point of view. Who do you think are these unprivileged people you are speaking off anyway and what do you think would hinder them at participation?

icebraining 7y ago

I don't see that attitude in HN at all. There are those who wish to see fewer (or none) political discussions, but their wishes don't prevail. Hence the aforementioned "Detox Week", which didn't even last a week.

renlo 7y ago

There are other forums* where people can discuss those things (*as in, the word forum, not necessarily “internet forums”). It’s refreshing to have a medium like Hacker News where technology news can be discussed without the polemics endemic to other message boards.

mrfredward 7y ago

>...the position of "keep politics out of $X" is the purest expression of privilege, and in general is an attitude that embraces the status quo, no matter how horrifying it might be for the unprivileged. Is there evidence that arguing politics over the internet is causing a net improvement in the world? I'm inclined to think political discussions on social media are causing political dysfunction, not fixing it.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> I'm not saying HN should allow ALL political discussion, but when technological issues inevitably and undeniably involve politics, either by influencing or being influenced, it seems a little cowardly that the general attitude of HN is "just don't discuss it" when the it in that case is core to the issue at hand, even if it happens to be political. HN allows (and frequently features) political discussion in those contexts, so while I agree that it would be a problem if your description was accurate, I can't agree that the description is accurate.