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Think about what it means to the HN culture to have a subject that normally would have been flagged out of existence as overtly political suddenly be featured f

Think about what it means to the HN culture to have a subject that normally would have been flagged out of existence as overtly political suddenly be featured front and center It means that a bunch of people who once thought they were somehow above or apart from politics find that they are not, and that the things that happen in the world constitute news of real interest to hackers. That's growth. It's also misleading to talk about this as an issue of ideological purity. People talk about purity when the politics of the public figure in question are not extreme enough. The problem is that she helped start a war that killed rather a lot of people, none of whom are now able to lend their voices to the discussion, and those who wish to remember those people are obliged to speak on their behalf. You don't mind her politics, and that's cool. But no one's forcing me to pay Dropbox anything. So I won't anymore.

panarky 13y ago
> That's growth. Exactly right. Everything we build has a political dimension. Every dollar or euro we spend is a vote. We have the knowledge, we have the skills, we have the power. But as long as we compartmentalize life and work, others use our talents for evil. The HN community has always held strong beliefs about political issues, but what did we do about it? It's time to exercise our power and ensure our money and our skills are used for worthy purposes.
- slapshot 13y ago
  > The HN community has always held strong beliefs about political issues, but what did we do about it? The problem is that "the HN community" doesn't have unified beliefs about nearly anything. There are people who are violently for and against: higher taxes, lower taxes, affirmative action, race-neutrality, abortion choice, life, fracking, nuclear power, wind power, birds, etc. If we declared that we couldn't work together despite differing views we'd quickly find that we're each an island. There is no single "hacker news" political view. We are comprised of atheists, baptists, catholics, jews, muslims, sikhs, janes, buddhists, and nearly every other group you can think of. Some are rich, poor, and in the middle. Old young and retired. You are free to use your money however you want, but it is not the "HN community" view.
  - panarky 13y ago
    > "the HN community" doesn't have unified beliefs about nearly anything We don't need unanimity. We don't have to agree on every issue. But we do have incredible power, because we're the ones who know how to build things and make them work. Those who would do evil depend on us to do our part. I won't participate. I will deploy my talents and money against wars of choice, the police state and institutional theft. We may not all agree, but the HN community is disproportionately interested in these issues, and has the ability to do something about them.
  - araes 13y ago
    Then we'll democratically argue and fight about it, and people will cast votes for the news they want to see, which will determine what the general "mood" of the site is. Its the bane and blessing of all social groups. As they get larger, people get exposed to / interact with lots of viewpoints that might not have originally been part of the core. To some level this is good, as it broadens horizons and enhances discussion. At the extreme, it all becomes bland, vaguely funny photos of animals (mostly cats). Its why community generated sub-forums / sub-reddits are kind of genius / kind of crap, as they let folks go off and sub-fracture as far as they want until the discussion matches whatever their internal worldview is. Of course, then nothing challenges their internal worldview.
    - dragontamer 13y ago
      Unlike Democracy in real life, people who hold different ideologies from you on a website will simply leave and start their own websites. Real Life Democracy forces you to work with your political opponents. Website Democracy forces everyone to think the same, or leave.
      - dec0dedab0de 13y ago
        Website Democracy forces everyone to think the same, or leave. If that were true then arguments on the Internet would be rare.
        13y ago
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - unclebucknasty 13y ago
    Except that she was supposed to represent our values. If there's any irony, it's that she did more harm to American values than did Sadaam.
mindcrime 13y ago
That's growth. So is cancer. HN really isn't the place for political discussions. It's even in the guidlines[1]. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon OK, yeah, they're fun in a way; and I've made the mistake of participating in a few myself (largely NSA stuff). But the thing is, there are plenty of other forums for discussing politics. There's no real reason for discussing politics here unless it has a specifically technical aspect to it. Personally, I'd like to see HN get back to a focus on technology and business, and the intersection of the two. If the front-page were nothing but stories about Erlang, D, Javascript, acquisition announcements, new tech announcements, and "Show HN: Rate my Startup" posts, that would be a Good Thing, IMO. [1]: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dragontamer 13y ago
  I'll publicly state my support of your viewpoint. All this political talk has poisoned Hacker News for me. It has been a constant onslaught. Instead of a focus on building cool stuff, Hacker News is becoming a location for internet activism.
  - vdaniuk 13y ago
    Oh no, now you can build cool stuff and be an internet activist on HN. Waaait a minute.. Now I get it. These sly HN activists are forcing you to go into political threads, read them and participate in the discussion and you don't have time left for reading about cool stuff. Damn these poisonous activists!
    - dragontamer 13y ago
      Every frontpage link on Condoleezza Rice is a link that could have been about technical stuff. Heck, the only Knuth related thing to hit Hacker News front page in months is only based on some political plea he sent to Condoleezza Rice.
      - 13y ago
burntroots 13y ago
And Brendan Eich gave $1000 to an organization people don't approve of. A guy made a joke at a convention about dongles and got fired. A whole lot of Sci-Fi authors were prevented from publishing at Tor because they identify themselves as politically conservative. This particular pattern has been growing over the last decade or two. The politics in question are growing more extreme and the required level of political correctness demanded is also getting more extreme. One exception does not disprove the pattern.
- drivingmenuts 13y ago
  I won't disagree with you - more and more, people wear their politics on their sleeves and have their ears plugged to any view to which they don't agree. This isn't restricted to leftists going after conservatives, nor conservatives going after leftists. It's everywhere. I think it's one of the side-effects of living in a society where so much information is available. In the past, we could know the politics of people in our immediate surroundings, but we also had to take our relationship into account. We might be acquainted with politics on a larger scale, but the people behind it were much more distant. Now, we can be exposed to any and every political viewpoint out there, frequently whether we were looking for it or not. The kinds of politics we can be exposed to aren't just local and we're surrounded by a sea of strangers, all clamoring for our attention. The natural reaction is to filter out the things we don't agree with and with so much political noise, we have to do it vehemently, just adding more noise. Or we can take another route, which is just to let someone else do the thinking for us, and there are people all too willing to step into that role. Even though I lean left, I don't think Eich was the wrong choice for CEO. His religious beliefs didn't really have much to do with the job. I could probably work for the guy and disagree with him all the same, but it wouldn't matter - that would not be the nature of our work together. Dr. Rice is another matter entirely. Her entire legacy under the Bush administration disgusts me. I would gladly chauffeur her to the doors of the World Court for her involvement in what I thoroughly believe are war crimes. Furthermore, her beliefs on privacy and security being subservient to the needs of the state are almost equally as disgusting to me. I really hope Dropbox will reconsider adding her. I'm sure they can find someone else to fill their needs to work with foreign governments who is far less engaged with the state apparatus destroying our personal liberties.
icarus_drowning 13y ago
It means that a bunch of people who once thought they were somehow above or apart from politics find that they are not, and that the things that happen in the world constitute news of real interest to hackers. That's growth. Unless the views that "unite" them are repulsive. If Rice's viewpoints were the polar opposite and we were all jumping on the bandwagon to boycott dropbox because they didn't support torture enough, would that be "growth"? Of course not. You don't like Rice's views on this issue, and want to convince people-- including the HN community-- that she was wrong on this issue, and that her views on other issues (warantless wiretaps, etc.) are dangerous for a business like dropbox. Moreover, you don't want to support dropbox now that Rice is a board member. Fine. But to claim that just because we all (or at least most of us) disagree with her views, that in and of itself means that we're "growing" as a community is genuinely dangerous-- because at some point, most of us are going to be wrong about something, and arguing on ideological merit is going to be the only thing that can "save" us. Simply saying that "we all agree, and that's growth" will just ensure that we're all wrong forever.

panarky 13y ago

> That's growth. Exactly right. Everything we build has a political dimension. Every dollar or euro we spend is a vote. We have the knowledge, we have the skills, we have the power. But as long as we compartmentalize life and work, others use our talents for evil. The HN community has always held strong beliefs about political issues, but what did we do about it? It's time to exercise our power and ensure our money and our skills are used for worthy purposes.

slapshot 13y ago
> The HN community has always held strong beliefs about political issues, but what did we do about it? The problem is that "the HN community" doesn't have unified beliefs about nearly anything. There are people who are violently for and against: higher taxes, lower taxes, affirmative action, race-neutrality, abortion choice, life, fracking, nuclear power, wind power, birds, etc. If we declared that we couldn't work together despite differing views we'd quickly find that we're each an island. There is no single "hacker news" political view. We are comprised of atheists, baptists, catholics, jews, muslims, sikhs, janes, buddhists, and nearly every other group you can think of. Some are rich, poor, and in the middle. Old young and retired. You are free to use your money however you want, but it is not the "HN community" view.
- panarky 13y ago
  > "the HN community" doesn't have unified beliefs about nearly anything We don't need unanimity. We don't have to agree on every issue. But we do have incredible power, because we're the ones who know how to build things and make them work. Those who would do evil depend on us to do our part. I won't participate. I will deploy my talents and money against wars of choice, the police state and institutional theft. We may not all agree, but the HN community is disproportionately interested in these issues, and has the ability to do something about them.
- araes 13y ago
  Then we'll democratically argue and fight about it, and people will cast votes for the news they want to see, which will determine what the general "mood" of the site is. Its the bane and blessing of all social groups. As they get larger, people get exposed to / interact with lots of viewpoints that might not have originally been part of the core. To some level this is good, as it broadens horizons and enhances discussion. At the extreme, it all becomes bland, vaguely funny photos of animals (mostly cats). Its why community generated sub-forums / sub-reddits are kind of genius / kind of crap, as they let folks go off and sub-fracture as far as they want until the discussion matches whatever their internal worldview is. Of course, then nothing challenges their internal worldview.
  - dragontamer 13y ago
    Unlike Democracy in real life, people who hold different ideologies from you on a website will simply leave and start their own websites. Real Life Democracy forces you to work with your political opponents. Website Democracy forces everyone to think the same, or leave.
    - dec0dedab0de 13y ago
      Website Democracy forces everyone to think the same, or leave. If that were true then arguments on the Internet would be rare.
      - 13y ago
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- unclebucknasty 13y ago
  Except that she was supposed to represent our values. If there's any irony, it's that she did more harm to American values than did Sadaam.

mindcrime 13y ago

That's growth. So is cancer. HN really isn't the place for political discussions. It's even in the guidlines[1]. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon OK, yeah, they're fun in a way; and I've made the mistake of participating in a few myself (largely NSA stuff). But the thing is, there are plenty of other forums for discussing politics. There's no real reason for discussing politics here unless it has a specifically technical aspect to it. Personally, I'd like to see HN get back to a focus on technology and business, and the intersection of the two. If the front-page were nothing but stories about Erlang, D, Javascript, acquisition announcements, new tech announcements, and "Show HN: Rate my Startup" posts, that would be a Good Thing, IMO. [1]: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dragontamer 13y ago
I'll publicly state my support of your viewpoint. All this political talk has poisoned Hacker News for me. It has been a constant onslaught. Instead of a focus on building cool stuff, Hacker News is becoming a location for internet activism.
- vdaniuk 13y ago
  Oh no, now you can build cool stuff and be an internet activist on HN. Waaait a minute.. Now I get it. These sly HN activists are forcing you to go into political threads, read them and participate in the discussion and you don't have time left for reading about cool stuff. Damn these poisonous activists!
  - dragontamer 13y ago
    Every frontpage link on Condoleezza Rice is a link that could have been about technical stuff. Heck, the only Knuth related thing to hit Hacker News front page in months is only based on some political plea he sent to Condoleezza Rice.
    - 13y ago

burntroots 13y ago

And Brendan Eich gave $1000 to an organization people don't approve of. A guy made a joke at a convention about dongles and got fired. A whole lot of Sci-Fi authors were prevented from publishing at Tor because they identify themselves as politically conservative. This particular pattern has been growing over the last decade or two. The politics in question are growing more extreme and the required level of political correctness demanded is also getting more extreme. One exception does not disprove the pattern.

drivingmenuts 13y ago
I won't disagree with you - more and more, people wear their politics on their sleeves and have their ears plugged to any view to which they don't agree. This isn't restricted to leftists going after conservatives, nor conservatives going after leftists. It's everywhere. I think it's one of the side-effects of living in a society where so much information is available. In the past, we could know the politics of people in our immediate surroundings, but we also had to take our relationship into account. We might be acquainted with politics on a larger scale, but the people behind it were much more distant. Now, we can be exposed to any and every political viewpoint out there, frequently whether we were looking for it or not. The kinds of politics we can be exposed to aren't just local and we're surrounded by a sea of strangers, all clamoring for our attention. The natural reaction is to filter out the things we don't agree with and with so much political noise, we have to do it vehemently, just adding more noise. Or we can take another route, which is just to let someone else do the thinking for us, and there are people all too willing to step into that role. Even though I lean left, I don't think Eich was the wrong choice for CEO. His religious beliefs didn't really have much to do with the job. I could probably work for the guy and disagree with him all the same, but it wouldn't matter - that would not be the nature of our work together. Dr. Rice is another matter entirely. Her entire legacy under the Bush administration disgusts me. I would gladly chauffeur her to the doors of the World Court for her involvement in what I thoroughly believe are war crimes. Furthermore, her beliefs on privacy and security being subservient to the needs of the state are almost equally as disgusting to me. I really hope Dropbox will reconsider adding her. I'm sure they can find someone else to fill their needs to work with foreign governments who is far less engaged with the state apparatus destroying our personal liberties.

icarus_drowning 13y ago

It means that a bunch of people who once thought they were somehow above or apart from politics find that they are not, and that the things that happen in the world constitute news of real interest to hackers. That's growth. Unless the views that "unite" them are repulsive. If Rice's viewpoints were the polar opposite and we were all jumping on the bandwagon to boycott dropbox because they didn't support torture enough, would that be "growth"? Of course not. You don't like Rice's views on this issue, and want to convince people-- including the HN community-- that she was wrong on this issue, and that her views on other issues (warantless wiretaps, etc.) are dangerous for a business like dropbox. Moreover, you don't want to support dropbox now that Rice is a board member. Fine. But to claim that just because we all (or at least most of us) disagree with her views, that in and of itself means that we're "growing" as a community is genuinely dangerous-- because at some point, most of us are going to be wrong about something, and arguing on ideological merit is going to be the only thing that can "save" us. Simply saying that "we all agree, and that's growth" will just ensure that we're all wrong forever.