Ask HN: Should HN be tech news and discussions only? I always get caught in these political discussions and news, like just recently as a result of the US military actions in Venezuela. To be honest, it's the kind of news I try to stay away from. It would be nice (for me) if Hacker News was strictly tech only, no politics. |
Just accept that some people want to discuss things other than computers and startups from time to time.
There was no tech in the story, no overlap.
You are being told, that it's impossible, since the world is not black and white: everything is of a shade of gray - either brighter or darker, but neither black, nor white.
If there is one thing that is tiring about HN it is new accounts that want to change it into something that it isn't.
And vulcanoes, too; if some biggie erupts in the Canaries or some Asian place, that would kickstart some really big tsunamies or something worse. That would be news in HN too because it would affect shipping too, if not literal industries in California, China, Russia or Japan.
If the Tesla article commenters are talking about ICE, it's a problem.
But just posting political news to the front page sucks. And, thankfully, we have a working system for handling it.
HN has traditionally not let much politics through, and it's the better for it. Some does get through, and that's okay--it's not a moratorium. But I think we should endeavor to keep it pretty limited.
Prove to me that DOGE hasn't planted backdoors and time b0mbs in critical government systems. And when Vance takes over, his pals Thiel and Musk will be running much of the show. BTW, both are immigrants.
I wouldn't mind a built-in filter facility. Other forums have them. Mainly, I use several devices to access HN and filtering means vary on my side.
Techie participation in authoritarian, privacy-robbing and murderous projects is a choice. I worked in aerospace, strictly in defensive projects, and departed the aerospace business per the customary cycles. Bush senior actually cut the defense budget. I worked for university, and per economic cycles, left that. Politics not involved? Very involved.
Great stuff lives past the home page, which I never read. Just checked, maybe one is of interest, whereas the daily scan turns up 10 or so, and I forward a couple a day to friends. I finally found an auto-pager that works on latest, so I can finally create the daily local/searchable digest. No slight on Algolia.
As for popularity, I can't read really long threads. I just scan "best" now and then to see if a goodie slipped past my scanning.
I grew up just post Hiroshima and Nagasaki and spoke with someone last Thursday who survived Hiroshima in the womb. Open science and free and open source software mean a ton to me, as liberating, the opposite of surveillance, control and giant databases. The more that government and tech oligarchs have them, the less free we are. [0] What Technology "wants" is liberation, not capture and control.
[0] https://fluidself.org/books/science/what-technology-wants
Or, you know, just hide them or ignore them and leave other people be to have the discussions they want.
Reason: 1. Our tendency to compartmentalize developments, be it social, cultural, political or technical, results in governance that let things rot and escalate. When the crisis becomes big enough, the Political Value of Time comes into play, aka we don't have time for plebs rights.
2. Without understanding of context, tech will misfire. A lot of problems only exist because we are conditioned to NOT take the bigger picture in mind. In media, in policy, people try to handle things as context-free phenomena. For example, western democracies have/had a very narrow focus on foreign threats. If an adversary is bombing you, than we can talk about defense, because: kinetic threats = mil. defense. Simple, but that is exactly our weakness:
Economic sabotage => you will be lucky if there is any joint action over gov. branches
Political infiltration => uhm, we haven't thought about that. Lets pretend
nothing happens.
Disinformation campaigns, bribing influencers, sowing discord
=> uhm that is maybe something for the other department
No guideline will divert a determined, thundering herd.
We are what we do, and it appears we do care about the world beyond our immediate technical interests.
Special occasion. Exception to prove the rule.
[EDIT] I just realized, I'd already added some tech into the otherwise political discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46476424
I still would rather not see it here. I get my fill of politics elsewhere.
I get why folks saying "if you don't like it don't read it" feels jerky, but "if you don't like it, don't participate in it" seems pretty reasonable, I'd think.
Nowhere in there does it require "tech in the story."
You may not consider anything non tech-related to be interesting, but that isn't your decision to enforce on behalf of the community.
I'm usually in the thread defending the unusual, non-tech posts. One of the most consequential reads of all time, for me, was a personal blog posted by Paul Buccheit about the death of his brother.
I'm all about the intellectual curiosity aspect, so you read me wrong.
The Venezuela story that is/was near the top of the front page is just pure politics. There's nothing else it brings.
I'm not policing or enforcing things on behalf of the community, no need to be a smarmy jerk. I'm presenting my arguments just like you are. Thanks for the lesson, Chad.
Here are some comments by dang clarifying the matter.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43142682
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43272671
Who tf is Chad?
The OP is talking about the Venezuela story on the front page. It's not a good example of what you're talking about.
I think the non-political threads are where HN shines, and I believe in playing to your strengths. This is a wonderful place where subject-matter experts come crawling out to give you wonderful, deep knowledge about some esoteric discussion on the regular.
We don't get political experts here as often, and the average political commentary on this site probably rivals...well, the rest of the internet.
But while we're rooting around in the mud, I might join in. And I'm okay with occasional politics, I just wish it didn't get enough upvotes to make random political stories the front-page news here. In the past, much bigger stories either didn't make the front page, or were moderated--I'm not sure which.
Anyway, I'm not really complaining here about the moderation, either. I think they do a great job. I can live with the amount of politics we have here, I just hope it doesn't increase.