3 ms·
I've been lurking on HN for about the last 8 years or so but only a few years ago made an account and I sparsely comment. Only a couple of weeks ago was my acco
by 22c 5y ago
I've been lurking on HN for about the last 8 years or so but only a few years ago made an account and I sparsely comment. Only a couple of weeks ago was my account considered worthy of being able to vote down. Meanwhile I've seen users essentially "game" their comment karma to high amounts within a few weeks.
I don't really agree with the idea that this place is an echo chamber, but I do sort of see it as similar to an IT meetup. You generally don't go to an IT focused meetup and start talking about abortion, religion, etc. and nobody would be surprised if you were kindly asked to leave the venue if you insisted on soap-boxing. If someone came and carted you off in a black van for speaking in a public place about your feelings on abortion I'd expect there to be a lot of push back from the public.
- AmericanChopper 5y agoPolitics is discussed all the time in HN. It’s not a generally taboo topic at all. I don’t think I’d go as far as saying it’s a full blown echo chamber either. But theres a pretty clear orthodoxy on certain topics here.
- 22c 5y agoI think it's discussed only where it's considered "on-topic". In my experience, many politcal articles are quickly removed as off-topic unless there's some technological bend to it. For example, politics in a thread about Julia 1.7 release would be "off-topic", politics in a thread about net neutrality might be on-topic but only up to a certain degree.