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> oh shit it's hacker news I've heard that people from the orange VC site are linking to this post! You are absolutely not welcome here. Cohost is not a place f
by pkoird 4y ago
> oh shit it's hacker news I've heard that people from the orange VC site are linking to this post! You are absolutely not welcome here. Cohost is not a place for you. you are bad and you hang out with white supremacists. please leave.
Is this an attempt at humor (in which case, I don't get it), or is the author serious?
- krapp 4y agoAre you being purposely obtuse or are you unaware of the reputation of this community outside of this forum? They're likely serious.
- ipcress_file 4y agoI am unaware. This place seems generally fine to me. Certainly no worse than others.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Exuma 4y ago[flagged]
- vore 4y agoHmm. Maybe comments like this are why the author doesn't like HN.
- Exuma 4y agoOr maybe the author is overly offended at even the slightest things, especially considering HN is like the least toxic community I can think of.. except maybe a fountain pen forum.
- nkozyra 4y agoWell that oughta clear up the reputation.
- jdjdjdjdjd 4y agoWhat are you talking about? What is the supposed reputation??
- krapp 4y agoBeing a toxic cesspool of the worst aspects of Silicon Valley tech-bro culture - racism, misogyny, antisemitism, conspiracy theory, elitism, aggressively ignorant hot takes and toxicity. For a lot of people - particularly women and LGBTQ+ in tech - this place looks like a den of alt-right creeps and incels, and being posted here is the last thing they want. If you want evidence of this you can just hang around with showdead on for a while in any thread that even vaguely broaches a political topic, or follow moderator dang's account long enough. You can also follow certain tags on Twitter or subreddits that archive the worst of HN. Some of what they discuss is taken out of context, but a lot of it isn't. And to be fair, Hacker News is a diverse community, not a monoculture. It's entirely possible not to see the worst side of this place, depending on where and how often you post, and it's entirely within anyone's rights to dismiss criticisms of the community (although I think that would be a mistake.) But that reputation also isn't entirely unwarranted. I'll be in the stocks if anyone needs me.
- causality0 4y agoIsn't the point that you have to have showdead on to see that stuff, though? Most sites/communities don't let you read what got removed. In fact, every time I see a comment of that nature that's not dead, I don't manage to get done typing a rebuttal before it's been killed.
- krapp 4y agoIt's still a problem that they exist and persist as much as they do. If you're transgender or gay and you know every time something you write gets posted here there's going to be a tangential diatribe about your pronouns, mental faculties and secret agenda, it doesn't make this place seem any more welcoming if that stuff has to be constantly voted down, and flagging it doesn't magically separate it from the zeitgeist of this community. It's still a part of what HN is, if it's a part that some people fight against. It's like living in an apartment with a pest problem. It doesn't matter how much you spray, you still have a pest problem.
- medor 4y agoI didn’t know it’s portrayed as low as 4chan
- roughly 4y agoNot OP, but the note surprised me too - I’m aware of a lot of the tendencies in conversations here, but it’s hard to really assess something from the inside, and the note feels harsher to me than I’d expect to be the common sentiment about this place. Can you share more?
- narag 4y agoI believe the answer is there when she complaints about the moderator. Probably she asked that someone was censored and didn't have her way. Now call me a white supremacist, but I tend to trust dang slightly more than someone that says that I'm bad without having met me.
- drdaeman 4y agoI'm not aware. If anything, I've seen a few cesspits and HN doesn't look like one. So, I'm surprised, and, naturally, would like to see a follow-up with more details. Also, with all due respect, your comment reads aggressively, as an attack (my apologies if this wasn't intended as such), so I suspect you're going to get some strong reactions. Just like that "if you're from HN you're bad, go away" banner. For what it's worth, I've also seen a few examples of groupthink bigotry, and I felt certain resemblance.
- JeremyBanks 4y ago[dead]
- jorvi 4y agoIf anything, I’ve seen HN be aggressively moderated in the opposite direction, where if you do something like point out men aren’t wholesale profiteers of modern society (pointing out suicide stats, education, often guilty until proven innocent & harsher sentences, etc) your comments get detached by dang.
- wolfgang42 4y ago> would like to see a follow-up with more details. Oversimplified summary of the complaint as I understand it: HN’s moderation policy is “thoughtful debate.” Marginalized groups do not appreciate their human rights being treated as being up for debate, politely or not.
- arp242 4y agoWhere are "human rights being treated as being up for debate"?
- FireInsight 4y agoI mostly read threads well after they've died down so I haven't seen it here, but I'd say for example anywhere not explicitly trans-friendly trans issues are debated by mis-informed cis people.
- sammy2255 4y agoI am also completely unaware, ive never noticed anything like that in my few months here
- g051051 4y ago> Your site is full of sexism and racism that you can't report to the main moderator because he approves of it. No idea what they mean. I read HN all the time, and haven't seen anything remotely like sexism, racism, or white supremacy.
- x3n0ph3n3 4y agoI browse with showdead turned on and all of that stuff gets downvoted or reported into oblivion.
- p1necone 4y agoIt depends on the topic, with posts that are mostly about technical stuff (which of course is most things that get posted on HN) there's generally no hint of any of that. But when anything gets posted that can be linked to race, or celebrates some minority, or talks about the climate I notice a disturbing amount of people crawl out of the woodwork and post some truly awful/ignorant things.
- roughly 4y agoYeah, I guess reflecting on this, there are a lot of good conversations that happen here, and because of that, I forget how much terrible shit also gets posted here. A lot of it gets downvoted into oblivion, but the bell curve on quality’s got some fat tails.
- p1necone 4y agoYeah I'm kinda the same. I stick around because interesting/useful stuff gets posted here, and the discussion is mostly also interesting/useful. But some days I wonder if I really want to hang around in a space where comments about "race realism" and obviously willfully ignorant climate change denialism are tolerated. (like you said they usually get downvoted into oblivion, but not consistently enough for me to be comfortable that those people aren't still a fairly large minority of those engaging in discussion on this site).
- fidgewidge 4y ago
- krater23 4y ago[flagged]
- jdjdjdjdjd 4y agoWelp, I guess there's an example of shitty people on here.
- nvr219 4y agoThe question is will the comment go grey quickly (so far so good)
- newZWhoDis 4y agoThe idea that this is a WN forum is absurd. Like, clear onset of mental illness absurd.
- deadly_syn 4y agoAs someone who has been a daily active 4chan user for atleast a decade, that kind of verbiage seems very extreme when describing HN in context.
- causality0 4y agoFor people to whom anti-racism is a philosophy, you're a racist if you do or say racist things. For people to whom anti-racism is a religion, you're a racist if you're not sufficiently and publicly pious.
- arp242 4y ago> the reputation of this community outside of this forum More like "the reputation of this community has with mega-narcissists who lack the empathy to cope with the fact there are people in the world who don't quite see things the way they do, and can't stand forums that allow people to voice opinions they don't like". There are plenty of thing I don't especially like about HN, but "filled with literal white suprematists" is not one of them. I'm sure you can find the occasional post here or there that gets by unnoticed in some little seen thread, but that's certainly not the norm.
- altairprime 4y agoI don’t read any indications of humor, and I expect they’re serious, given the topic.
- maxk42 4y agoIt has become unfortunately common for people to brand others with whom they don't fully agree as bigots.
- wtn90125 4y agoMade me not read the article... oh well HN comments are usually better anyway.
- vore 4y agoHN at least definitely has a Bay Area libertarian bro-ey vibe in a lot of corners of the internet. I think the white supremacist part is up to your interpretation but the intent behind it is serious, at least.
- failuser 4y ago[flagged]
- ipaddr 4y agoLet's use this as an opportunity to educate. Trying to label other groups things that are not true can be very hurtful to the people you pretend to be on their side. Here is a list of African American Libertarians. You should lookup things before you comment. https://lpedia.org/wiki/List_of_African-American_Libertarians https://lpedia.org/wiki/List_of_African-American_Libertarian...
- yashap 4y agoMy take is that political discussion/disagreements on HN are often avoided/stamped out, to prevent it taking over the site. If anything stands out about HN politically vs. the rest of the internet, it's mostly a "we don't talk about politics here" vibe. However, when political discussion does happen, I tend to see a very wide diversity of political opinions on HN. There's a decent number of users who are generally against any sort of feminism, LGBTQ, anti-racist views, quite alt-right feeling, and there's a decent amount of overlap between those views and libertarians. However, there's also plenty of people with very opposite opinions, very left wing, pro feminism, pro LGBTQ activism, pro anti-racist activism, etc. Kinda like Reddit, you get all ends of the political spectrum. It does have probably the most "Bay Area libertarian bro-ey vibe" of any online community I spend significant time in, and while I'm personally not a fan of that viewpoint, I also think it's only one of many viewpoints on this site. I've encountered the odd bit of really nuts racism that doesn't get moderated/removed, even if flagged (example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31722179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31722179), but that's rare, and I think that more falls through the cracks vs. dang literally being a white supremacist.
- 4y ago
- pcblues 4y agoI have not seen anything up-voted here that is non-tech opinion.
- Macha 4y agoAs in posts or comments? Because there's plenty of disagreeable opinions in the comments who get upvoted at least some of the time. I'd disagree with characterising everyone who uses the site like that, but also don't agree with people who think the comment quality is flawless.
- halostatue 4y agoOften the brigade down-voting of things that certain people consider to be a non-tech opinion is itself based on a highly-biased approach to what is appropriate for technical discussions. These are often the same sorts of discussion used dismissing discussions of alternative naming of git primary branches and other technical terms that have more accurate and less degrading names, or are entirely dismissive of codes of conduct for code repos or conferences. I have quite often seen COVID-19 disinformation upvoted here, as well as many other conspiracy theories unique to a particular subset of the population. I have often debated whether I want to remain part of the HN community—it is often toxic. But I also don’t want to cede space to people whose worldview is inimical to my own, so I stay and argue against the worst parts of it.
- sirmike_ 4y ago[flagged]
- Slighted 4y ago[flagged]
- maxmcd 4y agoHello there, confirmation of stated reality, I was hoping you'd show up.
- DangitBobby 4y agoThere are lots of different people here.
- WaffleIronMaker 4y agoIt's a reasonable question. I'm sure many of the users of Hacker News use anime profile pictures and declare their pronouns themselves, with completly valid opinions.
- tarotuser 4y agoThis is very serious. JWZ also provides some very colorful images if you link to his site from here. I think "techbro man children" is his commentary. And from Twitter before the fall, HN was known for alt-right hard libertarian hypercapitalist hellscape. So having this person be hard negative here is not at all surprising.
- slenk 4y agoCalling me a bad person because I occasionally interact with Hacker News is pretty surprising though. Nevermind her implications that I would be racist as well. As much of a childish reaction as I feel her response is because she saw HN in site stats, I instantly won't read won't she wrote because of that.
- fidgewidge 4y agoOh that's totally normal for people like that. There is an ambient assumption that everyone other than them is an empty vessel, waiting to be filled up by whoever happens to randomly pass by on that day, so if A is seen anywhere in the vicinity of B, then A must automatically have the same views as B, and that applies transitively to B and C and then C and D and so on ad infinitum. The only people immune to this are the woke who, of course, develop all their ideas independently and are totally immune from persuasion of any kind. That's what she means by "nazis at the bar". It's some woke meme that says it's not possible to discuss anything with people who you disagree with, because you'll instantly become exactly like them. That's all craziness of course - some sort of personality disorder in which basic empathy is lost and the way other people's minds work is badly misunderstood. These sort of people can be dangerous to those around them, and probably need psychiatric help, but it's not formally recognized as a disorder.
- stonogo 4y agoYou've completely misinterpreted the point of "nazis at the bar." The point of the story is that if you tolerate assholes in a space, that space will become famous amongst assholes for being a safe space for assholery. Nobody "becomes exactly like" anybody, but the people who do not like assholes stop coming around, while the assholes keep coming, so eventually the space is just entirely asshole-occupied. Naziism is used as a signal that this is not regarding "people who you disagree with"; civilized people don't regard Naziism as a valid topic for disagreement -- and the war about that has been over for decades.
- causality0 4y agoYeah that's the first I've heard of that one. Turn deleted comments on and you'll see a fair number of people banned for racism.
- l0b0 4y agoAnywhere which allows diversity is going to allow opinions you despise. Otherwise 1) it's not diversity or 2) you don't despise anything. Conclusion: Hacker News is more diverse than @arborelia. (Whether that's a good thing is up to you.)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ranger207 4y agohackernews have a tendency to be very, very, very convinced that they're right, are smarter than other people, and that other people's lived experiences are irrelevant. Part of it is the common assumption that if you're smart in one area then you're somehow smart in all areas; for example, consider doctors like Ben Carson. Part of it is that many people in tech are on the spectrum or have underdeveloped social skills. Part of it is that one moderator can't possibly moderate everything as fast as on other forums. Part of it is that many people in tech are downright rich compared to most people. Part of it is that technically-minded people have more aggressive debating styles in order to get to the core of an argument and uncover the correct answer or solution faster, which can be very offputting to those not used to it Some examples are any threads where the author uses nonstandard pronouns, such as this one from a few hours ago. Some people have terrible takes, and the proportion of them compared to places like for example reddit is higher https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34446673 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34446673
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- draw_down 4y ago[dead]
- ThrowawayTestr 4y agoHN doesn't immediately ban people for wrongthink, that means we're all Nazis.