Tell HN: Please stop posting political content

14 points by phyzix5761 4 days ago | 19 comments

Please stop posting political content on HN. I come here to get away from this stuff.

minimaxir 4 days ago |

Politics and tech are more intertwined than ever, as the GPT 5.6 case demonstrates. You can't avoid it.

vlian2088 4 days ago | |

I want you to imagine how nauseating the Internet would've been to you if everywhere you went you encountered evangelical Christians preaching. "God and ... are more intertwined than ever, as the ... case demonstrates," blah blah blah.

or, alternatively, imagine if Indians (18% of the world's population) were as passionate about politics as Americans (4%) are, and you had to endure constant shit slinging between rabid supporters and opponents of all the innumerable political factions of the world's largest democracy.

that's how the rest of us feels about the current thing being shoved in our faces by "everything is political" activists everywhere we go.

bigyabai 4 days ago | | |

Neither of those metaphors line up, really. America's outsized impact on the global economy, security and technology landscape is not proportional to it's population. The relationship between political endeavors and technology are purely secular and material, we wouldn't have things like EUVL or SAR without DARPA paving the way for political objectives.

Much like religion or the Indian Prime Minister, you don't have to discuss the American hegemony if you don't want to. But it does exist, and the burden of proof falls on you to explain how these things aren't important topics.

phyzix5761 4 days ago | |

I understand that but we're getting a lot of non-tech related political posts lately.

ThrowawayR2 2 days ago | | |

You have the ability to flag submissions that are off-topic and downvote postings that are off-topic as defined by the HN guidelines linked at the bottom of the page. Use them (in a non-partisan, fair way) to help shape HN into the HN you want to see.

bediger4000 4 days ago | | |

There's something to be said for keeping tech oligarchs out of politics as well, no?

jleyank 4 days ago |

If HN is business of tech as well as tech of tech, politics might be too intertwined to ignore. Particularly if deployment and government oversight is involved. If you can’t get to market or if oversight makes it impossible to operate than your good idea is noise.

stevenalowe 4 days ago |

I come here to read what people I respect are saying about relevant political items - are we watching a 250-year-old republic die from 1000 premeditated cuts, or just a temporary trainwreck of incompetence? Or both? How much direct and collateral damage can the Republic withstand?

Will the "military-industrial complex" end up controlling civilian access to AI models? Seems like that just started. It is a 1st Amendment violation? Probably... But knowledge is power so maybe not.

If only politicians would stay out of tech business, and tech oligarchs would stay out of politics, and technology would stop changing the world...

At an abstract level, we are watching a very slow rules-based system attempt to defend and repair itself from internal corruption and external threats.

jauntywundrkind 4 days ago |

If you have extremely sensitive needs like this it would be super easy for you to use an agent or something that can help shield your eyes.

It's super easy these days for you to get what you want, without having to impose a limited constrainted tiny world view on other people. You can just get what you want! It's easy.

general1465 4 days ago |

It would be like in Russia, they also did not care about politics. But when politics started caring about them, when they started being sent to frontlines, then maybe they figured out that it was a mistake to avoid being involved in politics.

tim-tday 4 days ago |

So many topics important to people here are becoming politicized. I wonder how we can avoid it?

Do we regulate powerful ai models?

Is science under threat? (Through defunding, politicization of specific areas of study etc)

Do we build more data centers?

Does a war in the Middle East constrain supply chain and double the price of some commodities we all care about? (For that matter is building data centers doubling the cost of some other things we all care about)

These are some things with political ramifications. We care about them and the news is relevant to us.

But if the political news is getting to you, I do empathize. I’ve had to go on total news blackouts a few times and have severely moderated my behavior in response.

sublinear 3 days ago | |

None of those concerns are new. You could have said all of that decades ago and been rightfully seen as a lunatic back then too.

Technology is always some component of those topics, but it's a very loose relationship. Tools are not the problem.

atmanactive 4 days ago |

Couldn't agree more.

toomuchtodo 4 days ago |

Hide button is right there on each post, it is a choice to not press it for posts one is not interested in.

Danox 4 days ago |

When Tech companies participate in politics, how can you ignore it and look the other way?

ggm 4 days ago |

Tricky issue. Have some sympathy, know I post too much politicised content. Not convinced it's either healthy or possible to exclude it. Do accept its unhealthy and entirely too possible to get bound into nihilistic doom scrolling.

Tech bros own a lot of the capital investment surface in our space. Do we ignore the dark side?