4 ms·

HN 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 interpretati

by vore 4y ago

HN 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 ago
  Let'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 ago
My 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.
sp332 4y ago
While I have seen a lot of it on the site, dang seems pretty willing to push back directly in a comment, or hellban such users (or uphold the hellbanning on review, I don't know how much is automatic).
- duskwuff 4y ago
  My understanding is that comments and submissions can be flagged to death by users, but "hellbanning" -- that is, marking a user such that all of their future comments and submissions are dead by default -- is a manual action by dang or other moderators.
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    Accounts can be auto-killed via sufficient flags, plus some computational scoring I suspect. I'll see and report spam accounts. The usual response is that those already were autokilled, or were killed shortly after I emailed (and prior to the moderators' response). You'll also see dang occasionally commenting on autoflagged "green" (new) accounts. E.g.: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23686501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23686501> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10638699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10638699> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22377470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22377470> An overview of how/when accounts are killed and what notice is given is here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21082164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21082164>
ssnistfajen 4y ago
Helps that the posts on HN are largely technical so discussions are generally politically neutral, but any time a political post that isn't even remotely relevant to tech or VC shoots to the top, the worst takes and sometimes downright bigotry will break loose and flood the comments. Most of them do get caught eventually with downvotes/flags/moderator action, but often the damage has been done as they remained visible for far too long.
fidgewidge 4y ago
Huh my impression was always that the Bay Area is one of the least libertarian areas of the US, and the biggest ideological clashes on HN tend to come from the Valley startup scene views colliding with the rest of the world in an open forum. See how much wailing and gnashing of teeth there is over AI safety in the Californian startup scene, in which safety gets defined as a fear that an AI might talk like or have the views of normal people.

by vore 4y ago

failuser 4y ago

[flagged]

ipaddr 4y ago
Let'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 ago

My 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.

sp332 4y ago

While I have seen a lot of it on the site, dang seems pretty willing to push back directly in a comment, or hellban such users (or uphold the hellbanning on review, I don't know how much is automatic).

duskwuff 4y ago
My understanding is that comments and submissions can be flagged to death by users, but "hellbanning" -- that is, marking a user such that all of their future comments and submissions are dead by default -- is a manual action by dang or other moderators.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Accounts can be auto-killed via sufficient flags, plus some computational scoring I suspect. I'll see and report spam accounts. The usual response is that those already were autokilled, or were killed shortly after I emailed (and prior to the moderators' response). You'll also see dang occasionally commenting on autoflagged "green" (new) accounts. E.g.: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23686501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23686501> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10638699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10638699> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22377470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22377470> An overview of how/when accounts are killed and what notice is given is here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21082164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21082164>

ssnistfajen 4y ago

Helps that the posts on HN are largely technical so discussions are generally politically neutral, but any time a political post that isn't even remotely relevant to tech or VC shoots to the top, the worst takes and sometimes downright bigotry will break loose and flood the comments. Most of them do get caught eventually with downvotes/flags/moderator action, but often the damage has been done as they remained visible for far too long.

fidgewidge 4y ago

Huh my impression was always that the Bay Area is one of the least libertarian areas of the US, and the biggest ideological clashes on HN tend to come from the Valley startup scene views colliding with the rest of the world in an open forum. See how much wailing and gnashing of teeth there is over AI safety in the Californian startup scene, in which safety gets defined as a fear that an AI might talk like or have the views of normal people.