Ask HN: Is Hacker News avoiding criticism of Trump? Do you think Hacker News is failing to uphold its intellectual standards by not actively challenging Trump's statements and actions? I know this aligns with HN's rules against political discussion, but isn't avoiding critical debate on Trump contributing to cowardice within big tech? |
7 submissions with "Trump" in the title, and over 100 comments in the thread:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=tru...
9 submissions with "Tariff" in the title, and over 100 comments in the thread:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=tru...
Apart from perhaps LLMs, no other topic has had anywhere near as much discussion, and the stories and comment threads are full of criticism.
You may not be seeing them because because they often get pushed down the rankings due to the flamewar detector, user flags and software penalties that are applied to submissions about politics and mainstream news.
If those mechanisms weren't in place, the front page would be dominated by flame wars about U.S. politics every day, which is not what the majority of the HN audience wants.
The intention of HN is to be a place to discover and discuss different topics that engage intellectual curiosity.
But the stories, discussions and criticisms are definitely there, and are getting plenty of exposure on the front page.
For instance, this one is currently on front: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43610246
If you're looking for the political comment on the smaller stories, use an alternate interface like hckrnews.com -- the discussion happens long after they've been flagged off the front page.
What standards are these?
I think there's an tendency to avoid discussing politics of any kind. I have seen a few political discussions get flagged or penalized off the front page.
>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics
It's not avoiding criticising Trump as much as avoiding politics in general. And there's a good amount of Trump criticism that gets through.