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Ask HN: Why is there such little political discourse on HN at the moment?
Seems like there are few stories or comments around the many tech related issues regarding DEI, investments, company pivots, trade, and geo-political territories. Not that there should be more, but it seems like there is less.
- anigbrowl 2y agoFlagging rings, basically.
- talldayo 2y agoMost of it is visible by enabling showdead on your profile
- breckenedge 2y agoBecause they are off topic. See paragraph 2 here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- anigbrowl 2y agoThey're not off topic if they are 'evidence of some interesting new phenomenon'. As a long-time HN user you are surely as aware of that caveat as I am. Politics has always made up a large part of HN discourse. You can verify this by hitting the firebase API, or just use the search field at the bottom of the page and look into some past discussions around terms like 'Iraq' or 'guantanamo'.
- creativenolo 2y agoIn fairness, I don’t think paragraph 2 excludes discourse on the topics I mentioned. It certainly hasn’t in the past. I keep reading about tech news on websites where I’d have expected so see it here first: that was a reason to ask.
- WheelsAtLarge 2y agoTech and Tech bros' politics are dominating the headlines. It's highly relevant since whatever happens will dictate a big part of tech's future. Deciding what programming language to use can't be the only HN subject at this point.
- breckenedge 2y agoAnd the beards all grow longer overnight.
- nico 2y agoTwo main factors: * automatic downranks and delisting from FP, algorithmically by HN * manual flagging by the users @dang says there’s little to no manual moderation, but over the years the site has been tuned to only allow a little bit of political discussion Here are a few useful recent comments by @dang about it: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42949237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42949237 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011
- creativenolo 2y agoSuper interesting. > Since some people perceive discussion quality to be (relatively) high on HN It’s really not at the moment on so many discussion worthy topics. I get it, there will be the same old tropes and opinions but HN does a great job of cutting through the noise and unveiling interesting perspectives. I’m surprised and a little disappointed. And left wondering where to find the discussions on such topics that are worth reading.
- nico 2y agoSame. Let me know if you find a place or have any ideas on how to start one
- deleted 2y ago
- tayo42 2y agoflagging is being abused IMO once i realized its happening
- dredmorbius 2y agoVoting, moderation, and flagging are affordances with predictable uses. Even the designers of such systems may find themselves being told the equivalent of "you're holding it wrong" (this occure to me some time back in an earlier life). I'd generally defer to actual use as well-known reality, rather than unqualified abuse. If that causes problems with platform goals, then the system should build in checks on such impacts, as HN has.
- ggm 2y agoI would say (despite my own personal engagement) that its about the right amount. I say despite.. because I judge engagement as a net negative much of the time: I prefer to read HN than write into it, and when I write, I judge myself harshly. I'm writing too much into the politics discussions.
- morpheos137 2y agoI think Elon Musk is funny as hell. Snake oil salesmen attract each other. I am apolitical btw. It's just funny to me how people buy into politics tribes as meaningful when the reality is just groups of primates jockeying for power the same as for the last several million years, except now some blow hards have twitter.
- basementcat 2y agoMaybe you can help explain how cutting funding for projects that fight malaria is funny.
- morpheos137 2y ago1. Malaria has been around longer than homo sapiens. 2. It will almost certainly be around after homo sapiens. 3. Are these projects in the USA? 4. Is anything preventing NGOs from more efficiently taking up the slack? 5. Why is malaria important to you of all things? 6. Have you ever had to worry about contacting malaria? 7. Isn't this good for ivermectin manufacturers?
- basementcat 2y ago> 1. Malaria has been around longer than homo sapiens. > 2. It will almost certainly be around after homo sapiens. Most illnesses have been around for as long as humans have been around. Yet we still heal the sick. 3. Are these projects in the USA? They fight malaria around the world. 4. Is anything preventing NGOs from more efficiently taking up the slack? NGOs including the Gates Foundation also spend billions fighting malaria and other diseases. 5. Why is malaria important to you of all things? Over a thousand children die every day from malaria. 6. Have you ever had to worry about contacting malaria? Yes. 7. Isn't this good for ivermectin manufacturers? It sounds like you find this amusing. Why is 1000 children dying every day funny to you?
- morpheos137 2y agoEveryone dies. What I find amusing is the concern of privileged Westerns who have probably seldom had to do a day of physical labor in their lives who think they can save the world from nature with their expertise and hope to profit and gain social status and better mating opportunities by doing so. It is nothing different from what primates Musk and Trump are doing. It is just playing a different game with the same goal. People want to influence the world, do good, so other people will give them higher status. Every single one of my human ancestors died. Most of them lived a more natural life than the livestock and zoo exhibits we see on the Earth planet today. All tech is vanity. If you want to survive the coming collapse learn to live as wild humans. Become hard. Make a living from the land as your ancestors did. Learn how to solve real problems. The future is dark. Only the smart and the strong will survive. Theories don't matter. What matters is what works in nature. We may not live to see the collapse but it is coming. The easy resources of the world are being exhausted. There are no replacements that are not more expensive to save us. Technology will not save us because we are constrained by the laws of physics and limited resources on this single planet. Primate humans will not leave the earth planet because no habitable other world lies within traversing distance. The only way for the species to survive is to downsize and return to it's ancestral habits and find a religion that is life supporting and hope a true space faring species does not find our world and harvest it for it's meat before we can become quieter and less noticable to the hunters. Even then there is hope if we are the product of alien bioengineering in primates that we will be saved by our shepherd species. It is also more probable that we are alone in the universe or the local group. Time will tell. However with agglomeration of billions of tweeting, soft, delusional, meat bearing creatures I fear our world is ripe for harvest by a race of space faring carnivores if it is within traversable space from wherever they may be coming. Maybe they have wormhole technology. We should be humbler, keep the secrets of time secret and love our families and downsize and be smaller and less noticable like our early mammal forebears. The meek shall inherit the earth and who knows what shall emerge from the bottomless pit. We know less than we believe. We should act more than strive to know. Live a humble, simple life, loving your family and particular social band in accordance with the Georgia Guidance whose monument was unfortunately blown up in accordance with the delusional zeitgeist that humans cause human problems and humans can solve human problems. Humans are a product of nature and subject to nature. Nothing more, nothing less. Even if there was an engineering project to create a more intelligent ape, it's still an ape. Don't forget. Your destiny, Adam, is not in the stars but on the planet Earth.
- dang 2y agoThere's quite a bit. Here's a recent sample: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42950790 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42950790 - Feb 2025 (456 comments) The FAA’s Hiring Scandal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42944203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42944203 - Feb 2025 (537 comments) What's happening inside the NIH and NSF - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42940257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42940257 - Feb 2025 (1422 comments) GitHub reveals how software engineers are purging federal databases - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42936940 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42936940 - Feb 2025 (308 comments) Payments crisis of 2025: Not “read only” access anymore - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42933219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42933219 - Feb 2025 (634 comments) The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42910910 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42910910 - Feb 2025 (2901 comments) CDC: Unpublished manuscripts mentioning certain topics must be pulled or revised - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42905937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42905937 - Feb 2025 (714 comments) NSF starts vetting all grants to comply with executive orders - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42886661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42886661 - Jan 2025 (485 comments) That's not a comprehensive list—there are quite a few others—but whether it's the right amount of not is something each HN user will have a different opinion about.
- archagon 2y agoYou should consider https://news.ycombinator.com/active https://news.ycombinator.com/active the real front page.
- creativenolo 2y agoWow - thanks.
- red-iron-pine 2y agoOfficially: no politics. That rule is not always enforced. Likely: the owners of ycombinator and hackernews have very specific views and connections to people in the tech industry with very specific views. Tech Bros are taking over, and ycombinator is squarely in the tech-bro camp -- that's the point of the site!