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> On certain topics, HN always had a downvote problem for certain contrarian opinions. For example, heaven forbid you didn't think everything Apple produced whe

> On certain topics, HN always had a downvote problem for certain contrarian opinions. For example, heaven forbid you didn't think everything Apple produced when Steve Jobs was alive was a gift from heaven Also see: Snowden is not a hero, Piracy is not ok & The NSA snooping is not so bad.

gadders 12y ago
I'd add anything negative about Aaron Schwartz to the list.
- streptomycin 12y ago
  Only after he died. Before then, HN wasn't too thrilled with his tactics.
deleted 12y ago
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xtrumanx 12y ago
The sad thing is all of those things are opinon-based and if we all started downvoting every opinion we disagree with then the comments here would surely be doomed. Would be nice if heavily downvoted comments (even if they were countered with even heavier upvotes) were reviewed once in a while and if they contained no 'bad' material the downvoters downvoting privileges would be rescinded.
idlewan 12y ago
Those three opinions are heavily oriented towards an acceptance of totalitarism, and that's probably why most of the HN crowd is not fond of them. - Snowden is a traitor: all hail secret laws! Burn the dissidents! All hail totalitarism! We should never be able to say to anyone what's wrong when we discover illegal and illegitimate actions! - Piracy is not okay: leads to "we should stop piracy", which leads to horrible things like either "trusted computing" and willingly or not willingly executing malware on your own machines, or censorship and total global surveillance. - The NSA snooping is not so bad: you discover that some government agencies have more power than the president of those countries (the intelligence community have the ultimate power to blackmail anyone and their mother), but it's not so bad, they are obviously "good people" so they don't misuse it. When you are a hacker, you know that anything has flaws (especially humans) and that we don't live in the teletubbies world, so you can't trust an entity that has so much power. Yeah, no wonder those opinions are shunned on HN.

gadders 12y ago

I'd add anything negative about Aaron Schwartz to the list.

streptomycin 12y ago
Only after he died. Before then, HN wasn't too thrilled with his tactics.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

xtrumanx 12y ago

The sad thing is all of those things are opinon-based and if we all started downvoting every opinion we disagree with then the comments here would surely be doomed. Would be nice if heavily downvoted comments (even if they were countered with even heavier upvotes) were reviewed once in a while and if they contained no 'bad' material the downvoters downvoting privileges would be rescinded.

idlewan 12y ago

Those three opinions are heavily oriented towards an acceptance of totalitarism, and that's probably why most of the HN crowd is not fond of them. - Snowden is a traitor: all hail secret laws! Burn the dissidents! All hail totalitarism! We should never be able to say to anyone what's wrong when we discover illegal and illegitimate actions! - Piracy is not okay: leads to "we should stop piracy", which leads to horrible things like either "trusted computing" and willingly or not willingly executing malware on your own machines, or censorship and total global surveillance. - The NSA snooping is not so bad: you discover that some government agencies have more power than the president of those countries (the intelligence community have the ultimate power to blackmail anyone and their mother), but it's not so bad, they are obviously "good people" so they don't misuse it. When you are a hacker, you know that anything has flaws (especially humans) and that we don't live in the teletubbies world, so you can't trust an entity that has so much power. Yeah, no wonder those opinions are shunned on HN.