4 ms·
I really appreciate your reasonable argument, but if the past few weeks have been any indication, there isn't any room for that here. HN has gone from interesti
by ceol 13y ago
I really appreciate your reasonable argument, but if the past few weeks have been any indication, there isn't any room for that here. HN has gone from interesting tech discussions to extremist, us-vs-them political rhetoric, and anyone who takes a different stance is jumped on and downvoted — as you can tell from your post having more replies than the entire rest of the thread.
Of course, you won't see the story about a federal judge ruling NYPD's stop-and-frisk was illegal[0], despite it being a much graver offense to individual rights, because it doesn't affect rich, white techies. But an email service you never used shut down and cited "NSA did it!" as its reason? Put that shit all over the front page!
[0]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/nyregion/stop-and-frisk-practice-violated-rights-judge-rules.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/nyregion/stop-and-frisk-pr...
- pessimizer 13y agoI am black and not rich, and I think that NSA/Lavabit stories are more relevant to HN than stop-and-frisk stories, because they are about techies and technology. Call me crazy.
- drivingmenuts 13y agoFor what it's worth, I agree from the perspective that HN is (I thought) primarily concerned with tech and innovation, etc. The stop-and-frisk program doesn't really have anything to do with technology and is a social issue about race and expectation. Technology can't even begin to fix that one - it comes from some other place inside us. It worries me that HN seems to be turning into more of a sub-reddit than anything.
- ceol 13y agoHN has always had stories not directly related to tech and startups. NYC is a thriving city for entrepreneurs; it hosts 10gen (MongoDB developers), Tumblr, Etsy, AppNexus, Gilt, Makerbot, Kickstarter, and FourSquare. A major news story centering around government abuse for that city should be on the front page along with the random science articles and "look what I made in a weekend! (but really it took me two years)" posts, especially when the abuse is far more outrageous than the NSA scanning international mail. I'm just pointing out how polarized and hypocritical this community has become. You just have to mention the NSA[0] (and bring absolutely no new information to the discussion) and it hits the top 5, but post about how an abusive program was ruled unconstitutional? Don't care.[1] Realize that if this keeps up, HN will go from "industry and startup news" to "/r/politics-lite" as it drives away the people who are here to talk tech and tire of the NSA/Snowden rehashing. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6197546 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6197546 [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6200193 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6200193