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I partially agree, but as a non-US user of the English speaking internet, the issue is with specifically US politics and social issues being everywhere. It drow

I partially agree, but as a non-US user of the English speaking internet, the issue is with specifically US politics and social issues being everywhere. It drowns out all attempts at discourse for anything else, and Americans, including people here, seem uniquely incapable of nuance in their thinking when it comes to politics. So, while I fully agree with your stance that banning political discourse is support for the status quo, I also think that it's reasonable to ask for it to be toned down a bit, especially when the politics and social issues of one country is basically drowning out everything else. All that said, I'm talking mostly about HN or other community forums here. The owner of Notepad++ has the right to put whatever they want into their software, and if we're discussing that here on HN then it's an occasion where discussing politics is valid.

shiroiuma 9mo ago
This is a good point. What would people think if there was constant political discussion here about, for instance, South Sudan and things happening there now? I'm sure there's bad stuff going on there and it's unfortunately, but if we had constant references to and discussions about the internal politics of South Sudan, I think a lot of people would get annoyed about issues that don't affect them at all in their day-to-day lives, esp. when they're coming here for discussions about technically- and computer-related topics. That must be how it seems for American political discussions.
- LoganDark 9mo ago
  Do you think it's socially acceptable to ignore everything that doesn't affect you personally? Many activists would certainly have you think otherwise. As far as I can tell, fighting that habit is a huge goal of activism.
  - FormerBandmate 9mo ago
    A huge chunk of activism is pointless and annoying. Especially when every cause is lumped together into Activism (TM) and the Omnicause. I don’t agree with them and I don’t think they should be in my software, or dealing with anything they don’t understand (for instance crime, homeless people, geopolitics, or really anything outside of overpriced vegan coffee shops). All they really do is end up getting Fox News people to vote for fascists like Trump out of spite
    - autoexec 9mo ago
      > A huge chunk of activism is pointless and annoying. Activism can be annoying, but it's never pointless (not even when it fails to be effective). > All they really do is end up getting Fox News people to vote for fascists like Trump out of spite It wouldn't be worthwhile for activists to resign themselves to inaction out of fear of offending the "Fox news people". "Fox news people" are already more likely than not to vote for fascists like Trump, and they'll use any excuse/justification they're being fed including "I don't like the way the wrong people are using their freedom to protest the wrong things".
      - pickleRick243 9mo ago
        I don't think this is really true if you look at the results of the last election. Activism just on the transgender issue alone looks to have swung a lot of votes.
        autoexec 9mo ago
        > Activism just on the transgender issue alone looks to have swung a lot of votes. What activism was that? Were there sit-ins? Millions marching in the streets? Were trans people chaining themselves to bathrooms? What was the terrible activism so extreme that it pushed "fox news people" into voting for an R when they'd normally vote for a D? My guess is that there are effectively 0 "fox news people" who'd ever vote for a D to start with and that fox news watchers didn't actually see or experience much activism on the transgender issue. Instead what they mostly had a problem with was policy put in place by non-transgendered people, library books that included transgender characters, and the existence of trans people generally. No activism needed.
  - moi2388 9mo ago
    Yes. Activists also don’t focus on all causes, not even most. They cherry pick whatever topic is hot in that moment. Sorry, I don’t care about that when I’m browsing something about software. When I care about politics I’ll deal with actual politics. Reddit won’t change my mind nor the world.
    - joe_mamba 9mo ago
      Same. I go to technical or other forums in order to pursue hobbies of interest and escape the political shitshow of the real world, not be reminded of it every step of the way. I don't want to be bombarded with their opinions on the matter, even if they were to align with my own. Virtue signaling becomes a slippery slope that only induces more division, anxiety and fatigue over those issues, while not actually helping with solving them in any meaningful way.
      - LoganDark 9mo ago
        I find it can be appropriate to talk about politics around a project when a political situation is directly affecting a maintainer of the project or the project itself and is a genuine reason why there are delays, weirdness or other impacts somewhere. I appreciate hearing about such things for transparency's sake. It's just all the other stuff that gets on my nerves, where it's just tacking politics onto the project just because there's injustice. For example it's very normal for the Tor project to talk about censorship and privacy. It's also fairly normal for Russian maintainers to speak out about how it's no longer possible for them to receive support due to sanctions. And I can understand if a Ukrainian maintainer has to focus on trying to survive or escape the country instead of developing their software. All of that stuff is completely fine and I wholly empathize with it. It doesn't bother me because it's not extraneous; it is directly relevant to the project. I also don't mind projects listing their preferred charities. But I do roll my eyes when projects continue to pine on about Taiwan's independence or the genocides in Gaza. If there isn't a reason why it's actually relevant to the project, I don't think the project page is a good space to push it.
  - user205738 9mo ago
    > Do you think it's socially acceptable to ignore everything that doesn't affect you personally? Yes, yes, and yes again. > Many activists would certainly have you think otherwise. As far as I can tell, fighting that habit is a huge goal of activism. That's their problem. As soon as you start contributing to them, you will not pursue your own goals, living your own life, but those imposed by activists or their supervisors. It's convenient for them, you give them a political resource. But why do you need it?
  - appreciatorBus 9mo ago
    That may be a huge goal of activism, but activists do not get to control what other people want to do. Activists wanting something is not synonymous with that thing being a good idea. It just means that someone wants something out of you could be good, could be very bad. No different than a sales person trying to get you to buy something.
  - shiroiuma 9mo ago
    >Do you think it's socially acceptable to ignore everything that doesn't affect you personally? No one has the time to pay attention to every little injustice in the world. For all the people crying about Gaza, how many of them are dedicating as much energy to the wars in Sudan, Yemen, or Myanmar, or the abuses by Russian security services (like imprisoning a guy for holding up a blank card)? This isn't to say that we should just ignore Gaza or Ukraine or ICE in the US, but we need to make a choice: either we spend ALL our energy addressing every injustice in the world, until there is no more injustice left (and this means we need to stop everything else we're doing now, including keeping society running, making food, etc.), or we need to choose when and how much attention we'll devote to various issues.
    - LoganDark 9mo ago
      I agree.
- appreciatorBus 9mo ago
  People on HN are happy to talk about the internal politics of distant nations, so long as the name of the distant nation is Israel or Palestine.
  - myth_drannon 9mo ago
    [flagged]
devkit1 9mo ago
I am an American and I make a very conscious effort to appreciate social and political nuances. And I go out of my way to point out nuances to others who, in my opinion, oversimplify their statements. It could be argued that the expression of stereotyping Americans as lacking nuance, itself lacks nuance. I believe really most people are similar in that we have our biases, differences in context and experiences. We can all try our best to be as nuanced as possible.
- esperent 9mo ago
  I would say it's statistics, rather than stereotyping. I'm glad you're capable of nuance though, maybe you can teach that to some of your compatriots?
- vjvjvjvjghv 9mo ago
  I think that the stereotype of Americans lacking nuance around political issue is valid. Obviously, like all stereotypes, it’s not 100% true but Americans seem to feel obliged to pick one side of an issue, most of the time aligned with the worth of their choice, and then to view everything that’s happening through that lens. Try to point out to a democrat that Trump is doing something right or to a Trump voter that Biden did something right. Most of them can’t accept that. The “other” side has to all bad. I don’t see this to such an extreme in other countries I know like Germany or Spain.
  - andyferris 9mo ago
    My personal take is this is a consequence of the two-party system. In the US you can "identify" as a democrat or republican. Once you do that, you don't _have_ to think, you can let tribalism guide you. If in another country I vote for these guys or sometimes those other guys, and once this little party that got a seat, but not really those ones, and I really hate these ones, then your "political identity" already has a lot of nuance. In Australia with preferencial voting, a single vote has a lot of naunce. What can you get in America? Green Party supportors who "strategically" vote for a democrat? Not much else...
    - 9mo ago
bsder 9mo ago
> the issue is with specifically US politics and social issues being everywhere. It drowns out all attempts at discourse for anything else Unfortunately, US politics also drives tech issues elsewhere like the EU. For example, local data control is a big thing that some of us have been screaming about forever but nobody paid attention to--until US politics made it a hot button issue. And, to be honest, if the EU would get off its ass and at least try to foster some alternatives, even those of us in the US would benefit. EU alternatives would mean that people in the US could finally vote against the megajillionaires with their wallets. > Americans, including people here, seem uniquely incapable of nuance in their thinking when it comes to politics. Bullets and beatings don't leave much room for nuance regardless of country.
- joe_mamba 9mo ago
  >And, to be honest, if the EU would get off its ass and at least try to foster some alternatives, even those of us in the US would benefit. What exactly do you want the EU, the Brussels based institution, to do here? Because AWS didn't come into existence because Uncle sam came in and twisted Bezo's hand telling him to invent a hyperscaler that will conquer the world. EU's lack of comparable domestic alternatives is a consequence of the failure of its entrepreneurship and free market in the SW private sector, and nothing that EU institution can do about it to magically fix this since the solution is not MORE regulatory interference form government bureaucrats who don't know how the internet works. You might be able to force innovation if the governments can throw money at the problem if the VC sector is lacking, but they can't force economies of scale and mass adoption without a China style great firewall, in which case you'd then have even bigger issues.
- direwolf20 9mo ago
  The EU is trying but these things have to happen bottom–up. The EU Council or EU Parliament isn't a software development shop. They allocate funds to groups like NLNET who allocate them to a selection of the projects they get proposals for. NLNET can only allocate funds to something an individual or small group proposes. If you want to propose something, please go ahead. Capitalists can also start software businesses and sell their software, but those are all in Silicon Valley because the money is there because the US has a privileged financial position.
globalnode 9mo ago
best solution to this is a closing of borders and fragmentation of the internet to local regional segments. i know it sounds backwards but it seems thats where we're headed
- direwolf20 9mo ago
  We're already there, but not geographically aligned. We talk in isolated forums, mostly on Discord. Big public melting pots like Twitter have failed.
lenerdenator 9mo ago
> I partially agree, but as a non-US user of the English speaking internet, the issue is with specifically US politics and social issues being everywhere. I mean, yeah. Most major social media services used in the West are based in the US. The single largest English as a first language population is in the United States. Given how many users from outside the US are oft wont to opine on our state of affairs even during the good times - often without even being asked - I like to think they'll endure our discourse.
nonameiguess 9mo ago
To be clear, this is a Frenchman of Chinese descent advocating for Taiwanese independence and your complaint is about Americans.

shiroiuma 9mo ago

This is a good point. What would people think if there was constant political discussion here about, for instance, South Sudan and things happening there now? I'm sure there's bad stuff going on there and it's unfortunately, but if we had constant references to and discussions about the internal politics of South Sudan, I think a lot of people would get annoyed about issues that don't affect them at all in their day-to-day lives, esp. when they're coming here for discussions about technically- and computer-related topics. That must be how it seems for American political discussions.

LoganDark 9mo ago
Do you think it's socially acceptable to ignore everything that doesn't affect you personally? Many activists would certainly have you think otherwise. As far as I can tell, fighting that habit is a huge goal of activism.
- FormerBandmate 9mo ago
  A huge chunk of activism is pointless and annoying. Especially when every cause is lumped together into Activism (TM) and the Omnicause. I don’t agree with them and I don’t think they should be in my software, or dealing with anything they don’t understand (for instance crime, homeless people, geopolitics, or really anything outside of overpriced vegan coffee shops). All they really do is end up getting Fox News people to vote for fascists like Trump out of spite
  - autoexec 9mo ago
    > A huge chunk of activism is pointless and annoying. Activism can be annoying, but it's never pointless (not even when it fails to be effective). > All they really do is end up getting Fox News people to vote for fascists like Trump out of spite It wouldn't be worthwhile for activists to resign themselves to inaction out of fear of offending the "Fox news people". "Fox news people" are already more likely than not to vote for fascists like Trump, and they'll use any excuse/justification they're being fed including "I don't like the way the wrong people are using their freedom to protest the wrong things".
    - pickleRick243 9mo ago
      I don't think this is really true if you look at the results of the last election. Activism just on the transgender issue alone looks to have swung a lot of votes.
      - autoexec 9mo ago
        > Activism just on the transgender issue alone looks to have swung a lot of votes. What activism was that? Were there sit-ins? Millions marching in the streets? Were trans people chaining themselves to bathrooms? What was the terrible activism so extreme that it pushed "fox news people" into voting for an R when they'd normally vote for a D? My guess is that there are effectively 0 "fox news people" who'd ever vote for a D to start with and that fox news watchers didn't actually see or experience much activism on the transgender issue. Instead what they mostly had a problem with was policy put in place by non-transgendered people, library books that included transgender characters, and the existence of trans people generally. No activism needed.
- moi2388 9mo ago
  Yes. Activists also don’t focus on all causes, not even most. They cherry pick whatever topic is hot in that moment. Sorry, I don’t care about that when I’m browsing something about software. When I care about politics I’ll deal with actual politics. Reddit won’t change my mind nor the world.
  - joe_mamba 9mo ago
    Same. I go to technical or other forums in order to pursue hobbies of interest and escape the political shitshow of the real world, not be reminded of it every step of the way. I don't want to be bombarded with their opinions on the matter, even if they were to align with my own. Virtue signaling becomes a slippery slope that only induces more division, anxiety and fatigue over those issues, while not actually helping with solving them in any meaningful way.
    - LoganDark 9mo ago
      I find it can be appropriate to talk about politics around a project when a political situation is directly affecting a maintainer of the project or the project itself and is a genuine reason why there are delays, weirdness or other impacts somewhere. I appreciate hearing about such things for transparency's sake. It's just all the other stuff that gets on my nerves, where it's just tacking politics onto the project just because there's injustice. For example it's very normal for the Tor project to talk about censorship and privacy. It's also fairly normal for Russian maintainers to speak out about how it's no longer possible for them to receive support due to sanctions. And I can understand if a Ukrainian maintainer has to focus on trying to survive or escape the country instead of developing their software. All of that stuff is completely fine and I wholly empathize with it. It doesn't bother me because it's not extraneous; it is directly relevant to the project. I also don't mind projects listing their preferred charities. But I do roll my eyes when projects continue to pine on about Taiwan's independence or the genocides in Gaza. If there isn't a reason why it's actually relevant to the project, I don't think the project page is a good space to push it.
- user205738 9mo ago
  > Do you think it's socially acceptable to ignore everything that doesn't affect you personally? Yes, yes, and yes again. > Many activists would certainly have you think otherwise. As far as I can tell, fighting that habit is a huge goal of activism. That's their problem. As soon as you start contributing to them, you will not pursue your own goals, living your own life, but those imposed by activists or their supervisors. It's convenient for them, you give them a political resource. But why do you need it?
- appreciatorBus 9mo ago
  That may be a huge goal of activism, but activists do not get to control what other people want to do. Activists wanting something is not synonymous with that thing being a good idea. It just means that someone wants something out of you could be good, could be very bad. No different than a sales person trying to get you to buy something.
- shiroiuma 9mo ago
  >Do you think it's socially acceptable to ignore everything that doesn't affect you personally? No one has the time to pay attention to every little injustice in the world. For all the people crying about Gaza, how many of them are dedicating as much energy to the wars in Sudan, Yemen, or Myanmar, or the abuses by Russian security services (like imprisoning a guy for holding up a blank card)? This isn't to say that we should just ignore Gaza or Ukraine or ICE in the US, but we need to make a choice: either we spend ALL our energy addressing every injustice in the world, until there is no more injustice left (and this means we need to stop everything else we're doing now, including keeping society running, making food, etc.), or we need to choose when and how much attention we'll devote to various issues.
  - LoganDark 9mo ago
    I agree.
appreciatorBus 9mo ago
People on HN are happy to talk about the internal politics of distant nations, so long as the name of the distant nation is Israel or Palestine.
- myth_drannon 9mo ago
  [flagged]

devkit1 9mo ago

I am an American and I make a very conscious effort to appreciate social and political nuances. And I go out of my way to point out nuances to others who, in my opinion, oversimplify their statements. It could be argued that the expression of stereotyping Americans as lacking nuance, itself lacks nuance. I believe really most people are similar in that we have our biases, differences in context and experiences. We can all try our best to be as nuanced as possible.

esperent 9mo ago
I would say it's statistics, rather than stereotyping. I'm glad you're capable of nuance though, maybe you can teach that to some of your compatriots?
vjvjvjvjghv 9mo ago
I think that the stereotype of Americans lacking nuance around political issue is valid. Obviously, like all stereotypes, it’s not 100% true but Americans seem to feel obliged to pick one side of an issue, most of the time aligned with the worth of their choice, and then to view everything that’s happening through that lens. Try to point out to a democrat that Trump is doing something right or to a Trump voter that Biden did something right. Most of them can’t accept that. The “other” side has to all bad. I don’t see this to such an extreme in other countries I know like Germany or Spain.
- andyferris 9mo ago
  My personal take is this is a consequence of the two-party system. In the US you can "identify" as a democrat or republican. Once you do that, you don't _have_ to think, you can let tribalism guide you. If in another country I vote for these guys or sometimes those other guys, and once this little party that got a seat, but not really those ones, and I really hate these ones, then your "political identity" already has a lot of nuance. In Australia with preferencial voting, a single vote has a lot of naunce. What can you get in America? Green Party supportors who "strategically" vote for a democrat? Not much else...
  - 9mo ago

bsder 9mo ago

> the issue is with specifically US politics and social issues being everywhere. It drowns out all attempts at discourse for anything else Unfortunately, US politics also drives tech issues elsewhere like the EU. For example, local data control is a big thing that some of us have been screaming about forever but nobody paid attention to--until US politics made it a hot button issue. And, to be honest, if the EU would get off its ass and at least try to foster some alternatives, even those of us in the US would benefit. EU alternatives would mean that people in the US could finally vote against the megajillionaires with their wallets. > Americans, including people here, seem uniquely incapable of nuance in their thinking when it comes to politics. Bullets and beatings don't leave much room for nuance regardless of country.

joe_mamba 9mo ago
>And, to be honest, if the EU would get off its ass and at least try to foster some alternatives, even those of us in the US would benefit. What exactly do you want the EU, the Brussels based institution, to do here? Because AWS didn't come into existence because Uncle sam came in and twisted Bezo's hand telling him to invent a hyperscaler that will conquer the world. EU's lack of comparable domestic alternatives is a consequence of the failure of its entrepreneurship and free market in the SW private sector, and nothing that EU institution can do about it to magically fix this since the solution is not MORE regulatory interference form government bureaucrats who don't know how the internet works. You might be able to force innovation if the governments can throw money at the problem if the VC sector is lacking, but they can't force economies of scale and mass adoption without a China style great firewall, in which case you'd then have even bigger issues.
direwolf20 9mo ago
The EU is trying but these things have to happen bottom–up. The EU Council or EU Parliament isn't a software development shop. They allocate funds to groups like NLNET who allocate them to a selection of the projects they get proposals for. NLNET can only allocate funds to something an individual or small group proposes. If you want to propose something, please go ahead. Capitalists can also start software businesses and sell their software, but those are all in Silicon Valley because the money is there because the US has a privileged financial position.

globalnode 9mo ago

best solution to this is a closing of borders and fragmentation of the internet to local regional segments. i know it sounds backwards but it seems thats where we're headed

direwolf20 9mo ago
We're already there, but not geographically aligned. We talk in isolated forums, mostly on Discord. Big public melting pots like Twitter have failed.

lenerdenator 9mo ago

> I partially agree, but as a non-US user of the English speaking internet, the issue is with specifically US politics and social issues being everywhere. I mean, yeah. Most major social media services used in the West are based in the US. The single largest English as a first language population is in the United States. Given how many users from outside the US are oft wont to opine on our state of affairs even during the good times - often without even being asked - I like to think they'll endure our discourse.

nonameiguess 9mo ago

To be clear, this is a Frenchman of Chinese descent advocating for Taiwanese independence and your complaint is about Americans.