Why is Hacker News like that?(drewdevault.com) |
Why is Hacker News like that?(drewdevault.com) |
For the record, I vouched for this thread to keep it from being flagged, but that didn't seem enough. I think it's an interesting discussion.
So what they're doing is leaving low value comments and then they're probably the same people flagging it as "controversial" or "flamebait" when there wouldn't be any of those things if they didn't leave those comments. It's incredibly bad faith behavior (by some of them, not you to be clear).
We're at the precipice of AI unravelling the fabric of society. Many tech issues now are so consequential that the politics simply cannot be ignored.
I agree about boring comments but that goes well beyond political. Every time I see a comment about how this year's iPhone is "evolutionary not revolutionary" or some variation. It's boring, lazy and pointless.
This little part is the whole thing! Political discussion is really much more interesting than say, product advertisements or corporate announcements. And better aligned with the spirit of curiosity and hacker ethos too.
Why not flag both or neither as "trampling curiosity"? Inconsistency and hypocrisy is worse than any policy or preference could be.
Why no topics tags so that nerds/hackers/curious can sort themselves away from the hustle/biz/finance types? Well.. platforms do not want to empower their users.. they want to herd them and force-feed them and profit from the engagement boost that bad feelings create. And boom!, just like that tech is suddenly political again, now we can all pick a side, cue the cliches, vote with your wallet, if you don't like it leave, make your own why dontcha, and yada yada.
I think that's probably overinterpreting in most cases. No doubt there's a long tail of weird behavior, but the fat part of the distribution is covered by a simpler fact: humans change when emotions get activated. People who have interesting things to say when their curiosity circuits light up have entirely different things to say when their amygdalas are inflamed.
Edit: their right amygdalas, that is! it isn't clear to me what the left one does but it's a puzzle why everyone says "the amygdala" when we all have two. Perhaps it's a metaphor for how the fight/flight system closes all attention to anything else.
The only thing I've done since then is mark the post so it won't be killed by excessive user flags. This means the thread can stay open for new comments.
I'm not going to remove the flags, because they are clearly an authentic community reaction, though of course some users will have the opposite reaction as well; this is normal.
My thinking could be naïve, as the algorithms were probably created with the backing of some data and experience, but anyway, I felt like sharing my opinion.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
> we moderate HN less, not more, when YC or YC startups are the story, so I've refrained from doing that here.
As a recent example, anti-progressive themes (being supportive of Israel, for example) are nowhere to be found. Pro-Palestinian views abound with little counter-engagement.
In addition, just look at all the anti-US posts/comments. Other countries do not get the same treatment in the same volume. The US is a punching bag here. It's tiresome. HN used to be a respite from political insanity on both sides. Now some days it's no better than reddit.
From my (politically neutral, believe it or not) perspective, this site is extremely hostile to conservatives. It's interesting that progressives feel the same way. Maybe we should put a pause on political discussions altogether.
It's funny he mentioned the grok discussion. The other day I saw grok got some new release, and although I don't use it, I was curious whether it is any good, and was pleasantly surprised people were actually discussing it and not all running to the keyboard to see who could get their EM comments in first. Like they really cleaned up the place.
This article complains that all their political comments got removed for calling Elon 'fascist', 'nazi' etc. - yes, that's the point; your useless, political opinions nobody else wants to hear, get removed.
The article is practically a meme, using every buzzword imaginable. Racism, sexism, nazi, hate, bigotry, wokeness, etc., they're all there. The person who wrote this article is practically an NPC.
Are we forgetting how Elon put his thumbs on the scale and Grok suddenly kept bringing up white genocide in South Africa in completely unrelated topics [1]?
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/may/14/elon-musk...
Like Facebook (but worse) they barely allow users to interact. The primary goal is to build profiles for other purposes.
You wrote "Elon "Sieg Heil"ed twice on national TV." as if it were undisputed fact. This "fact" been repeated here to the extent that "only Nazis could have interpreted it differently" is the default.
Well, I interpreted it differently. It was an (admittedly inartful) attempt to extend his "heart" to the crowd. This is further supported by his spoken words at the time of the supposed salute: "My heart goes out to you."
Perhaps I just like to assume innocence as opposed to malevolence, but this explanation makes sense to me. Elon isn't the most effective public speaker, so it's entirely reasonable to me that he was just trying to mime what he was saying.
You're welcome to disagree, but the fact that folks here just uncritically repeat "Elon is a Nazi; he even saluted" without any pushback is another example of the symptoms I describe in my earlier comment.
By this metric, HN is not a business promotion platform.
Regarding Musk and his antics, I just tune them out. His projects are vain and self-serving. Let them die, the community sooner or later will recognize them for what they are and move on.
HN has a massive problem where it's low key fostering right wing ideology with inadequate moderation. I'm flagging what I can.
Maybe you forgot to add the "far" to "right/left wing", since that's usually what people use as shorthand for "the bad stuff on that side"?
Reading HN comment threads about things I know little about always feels like a delight: all these smart people who know so much about this topic, contributing their thoughts.
Reading HN comment threads about things I know a lot about nearly always feels horrific, straight torrents of incorrect information and ignorant speculation. Occasionally not, but not typically or even often.
But the system itself so conveniently allows for just a couple people to suppress and deny, to shut down topics, that it systematically gives quarter to the very worst, to the motivated bad actors, and the other lesser plagues that befall humanity.
I really wish there was some accounting, some visibility, some consequence for this abuse of the system, this steering away from hackeryly inquiry & examination of the world. The act of cloaking & hiding shouldnt be so easy to do from the shadows; HN should at least make you do such moderation acts in public.
Shouldn't intellectual curiosity challenge norms and assumptions?
What's changed I think is that Big Tech are essentially defense contractors. You can put Amazon, Google and Microsoft in the same bucket as RTX, Boeing or Lockheed Martin.
A huge portion of HN is simply after their bag. The idea of the countercultural almost beatnik "hacker" like early Steve Jobs (yes, yes, I know, he's not the tech guy) is long dead. We saw this with crypto dominating HN. Crypto is just a bunch of people who are hoping to be the first to do the rug pull. Now it's AI.
Silicon Valley itself grew out of the military industrial complex. It's simply returned to its roots.
>>There’s often frustration that every thread related to a Musk company includes a discussion about Musk, but Musk himself caused that by being the only tech founder to actively campaign for Trump.
Supporting Trump is a perfectly normal political position hold by around half of the voting population. If you can't see how reasonable, smart, hard working and honest people vote for Trump you need to adjust your world view. I suggest getting out mor and talking to people. "Musk is a Nazi" nonsense it just pure brain rot.
So those are low effort nonsense comments which don't belong.
Why are anti-capitalists like that?
Quite the choice to say he doesn't deserve attention. Doing a public work to raise some much needed attention, to give people a basic heads-up what they are stumbling into.
Once again here Drew just letting the fishes know what particular brand of wet the water is.
All of these "reasonable political" comments that he points out for being moderated out SHOULD have been moderated out. They are absurd, not in good faith, extreme leftist arguments.
> Unexamined bias against progressivism and the rights and interests of anyone who isn’t the “default” middle-class white cis male
This is just stupid as well. The default is a middle-class white cis male? Its tech, the average is a 1/3 Indian 1/3 Chinese and 1/3 White man.
Sorry to say DHH and Elon Musk are both not Nazis, and the demand for Nazis seems to be perpetually outstripping the apparent demand for them.
This is as profound-sounding as it is nonsensical in meaning. Let's say I see someone online make a comment that in its phrasing and word choice is an obvious allusion to the Fourteen Words. If I manage to pick up on it, does that make me a neo-Nazi supporter who agrees with that phrase? Are you saying that only the target audience can pick up on subtexts made for them? This is absurd.
That was rambly, but I'm saying I 75% agree with you.
That might be a "grass is greener" effect. I know people from many countries who will tell you how terrible things are in their country.
> Maybe we should put a pause on political discussions altogether.
Any discussion here that touches on US politics becomes predictable and low quality.
Maybe the volume is proportional to the impact each country has globally? (especially these years)
There is a big political aspect to Grok: it does not really bring much more technologically than any other model, its existence is mainly political in the first place. And talking about it / promoting it is participating to that: not everyone who does that does it for ideological reason, but a part of people doing it clearly does.
I started self-censoring on HN because I knew some very normal and on-topic things to say would be voted to oblivion because they had the shape of a controversial topic that the average HN commenter can not relate to except through some mainstreamed right-leaning cultural narrative. The mere mention that I was an affected party in some culture war adjacent thing was treated as if I had invoked a thought-terminating cliche. It was very... anti-curious.
So I principally agree on the conclusion, when emotions get activated this site gets worse. I just see the impact differently - anything that deviates from the libertarian-right leaning default is pushed away. I'm still relieved I had my pseudonymous account with a lot more HN internet points wiped and don't have to care about this site on an emotional level anymore.
However, that doesn't equate to what I believe was being implied: HN as a business promotional tool specifically for YCombinator.
I applied it in this case by preventing the thread from getting killed outright, which would have closed it to new comments. This is moderating less than we normally would, since any thread that is flagged this heavily would normally get killed.
It's important to understand that "moderating less" means moderating less than we normally do. It doesn't imply "not moderating at all", and certainly not "always override user flags". Those would be loopholes that any internet provocateur could drive a truck through, as I've mentioned from time to time over the years:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Are there any stats available on the weighting ratios such as flags to upvotes, likes and comments per post after flagging, average time to frontpage to flag?
(G summarises the following[0], but a definitive source would clear up what the necessary algorithmic checks are).
If a president is just being not competent, it would be normal that the majority of the posts are negative.
I wonder how it was for a "normal" president during a "normal" period. For example, Obama? From what I recall, the international comments were pretty balanced at the time.
- migrants in the UK and EU;
- slave labor in the Far East;
- documented genocide in Africa;
- military conscription in Russia;
- press freedom in Central Asia;
- crime and drugs in Latin America
This is not to say that the US shouldn't be criticized. Let's have that discussion. But why on HN? And why do these other topics never result in substantive engagement? My earlier statement that the US is a punching bag meant that relative to all other injustices in the world, the US appears to be facing the most criticism on HN.
On one hand, maybe it's because the expectations for the US are so much higher than other countries. On another, maybe it's because it's fashionable to criticize the hegemon. I don't know. But my experience here is that almost all "government does something bad" posts are about the US. This is, to me, evidence of a bias.
Interestingly, "migrants in the UK and EU" seems to even be one of the favorite subject of conversation of americans (especially conservatives), totally blown out of proportion with respect to the reality of the crisis.
But importantly, people react to the conversation that is already on the table. When you see people on HN criticizing the US government, it is in the large majority of the case when the US government is a relevant subject of the conversation while crime and drugs in Latin America is not. If HN was talking more about Latin America, maybe there would be more negative reactions about their crisis around crime and drugs. In the meanwhile, the US government actions that are discussed outside of US are in the large majority actions that has a direct impact on the people discussing. Tariff and petrol cost have way more impact on European countries than drug cartel in Latin America (and often way more than even migrants in these countries).
> But my experience here is that almost all "government does something bad" posts are about the US. This is, to me, evidence of a bias.
What about an evidence that the US government is exceptionally bad while also having a lot of impact on other people's lives?
US politics has become so polarized, so trench-warfare-without-ever-giving-a-single-INCH-of-ground, that few people will actually listen to a point by the other side, no matter how valid. They will instead argue to the ends of the earth that the other side does not actually have a point, they have never had a point, on any subject, ever.
This leads to lousy conversations - both sides shouting at each other, and nobody listening.
Around the start of Trump's second term, HN reduced the degree to which politics was considered off topic. I think that's made HN more political, more shouty, less having actual conversations. And I think it has hurt the character of the site, and the community around it.
I really recall leading up to and shortly after the election the vibe here was decidedly pro-Trump. The tech right was ascendant, posts glazing Elon and other administration cronies were the rule, and criticisms were flagged/dead almost immediately.
I agree with the GP post that some of Drew's observations seem off today, but I think it's a relatively recent development. It seems to me that only in the past 6 months has a permission structure arisen that criticism of this administration has become accepted here.
My point is that proposed discussions about US policy that point to something that some HN user has decided is worthy of praise never seem to get traction here, while discussions that are objectively critical of the US seem to proliferate (with no substantive discussion in opposition in the comments section).
That's the real issue. Humans do not engage in productive discussion if everyone holds the same opinions. Find me a set of conservative opinions that has resulted in substantive engagement here and I'll be happy to update my priors. Until then, what I see in the political threads here is an echo chamber, with the (conservative) opposition either downvoted or reluctant to post. I can't tell you why others don't post, but I can tell you why I don't (and I'm not even a conservative):
1) I don't think HN should be a forum for political discussions in the first place; and
2) I'd probably just get downvoted anyway since the progressive bias here is so strong.
I do remember of slightly better times, but the governments were also of a quite different substance.
It's funny and maybe it's my European-bias, because I'd label myself rather a progressive (coming from a very, very conservative background). But I don't perceive the HN vibe to be progressive at all, neither conservative. It's of a different kind.
They apologize.
And you know when someone deserves the benefit of charitable interpretation?
When they don’t spend their vast influence and wealth to very publicly and globally promote the abhorrent ideology symbolized by that “misinterpreted” gesture.
HN is nothing if not contrarian, which can lead to interesting discussions, but ehhh… this is not the thing to be contrarian about, especially given all the overwhelming evidence out there.
So no, the gesture was pretty clear.
Crediting someone's gesture of being only an inappropriate, forgivable mistake, or misinterpreted gesture is skipping conveniently his discourse (and actions) towards far-right groups, and the impact his discourse has on these groups (if only in Europe, where I can witness it). It didn't happen in a vacuum.
Someone with such wealth, power and extent cannot have the excuse of the doubt: they are waaaay over-equipped to know better.
I don't care about Elon. I don't own or use any of his products, and I don't idolize men. I don't wish to engage in a discussion about whether Elon is a (literal or figurative) Nazi.
I care that Drew DeVault's assessment that HN has been taken over by right-wing posters does not match what I've seen here, and therefore maybe we as a community should re-evaluate the benefit of engaging in political discussion on this (technical) forum.
I think the subject is debated again and again each time it appears. There were tons of newspaper article debating the subject.
You say you don't know Musk and the context around him. Well, how can you know if there was constructive debate then? You basically say "I did not care to read any article discussing of Musk's ideology, but I conclude that if someone link Musk to one ideology, it's surely a superficial reaction".
(as for the need of having some political discussion when talking about technology, the fact that you admit not understanding the context around Musk shows that maybe in fact it is more needed that you think it is)
For me, the gesture is already quite suspicious (People have tried to cherry-pick similar gestures from other people, but they don't come close. The way the hand is flat at the end does not seem something that come "naturally" or "by accident", as it does not occur in others). But the reaction to the controversy is even more suspicious.
As I've said, far-right people were saying it was a nazi salute, and Musk never deny that to them. He criticized "far-left", or even instrumentalized it to attack people he does not like (for example, he attacked Wikipedia for just saying "some people compared the gesture to a nazi salute", which, according to him, is the proof that Wikipedia is part of the far-left conspiracy). He may have publicly said it was not a nazi salute, but it is clear that it is not enough to convince his far-right supporters it was not one.
So, yes, I think that "he has made a nazi salute" should be the default hypothesis. The data fits wayyyy better with this hypothesis than the one where it was an accident. No need to pretend that this hypothesis is favorised because of a conspiracy of biased people against Musk.
(Personally, I think that Musk did this gesture on purpose, in order to troll, trying to "trigger the woke". Does it make of him a Nazi? Well, some people supported the Nazi party because they were intrinsically "nazi" inside (whatever that means, probably something different for every single nazi). Some people supported the Nazi party just to troll their neighbour. They all ended up guilty of nazism all the same. So, while it can be an interesting nuance, it does not matter: if you are happy to play with the nazis, you are as toxic for humanity as them.)
it's transparently avoiding moderation.
"it just seems transparent that you have a right wing worldview" - based on a single opinion about whether an alternative explanation for a hand gesture could be plausible? That you feel you know me well enough to draw this conclusion from a single sentence in a reply to a comment and announce it, as if you're branding me with shame, is part of the problem with politics here on HN, and in my opinion is strong evidence against Drew's claim in his post. A more constructive comment would engage with the substance of the reply, not the reactionary labeling of its author.
"but don't wanna say it openly coz they are openly racist and fascistic now." You've got the result right, but not the motivation. You're on to something: people who might hold these views don't want to say it openly ON HN because this is the reaction they will receive. Not debate, not even constructive pushback: just tired accusations of being in league with racists and fascists.
Your comment exemplifies the current problem with political discussions on this site: any non-mainstream (and that's this weird combination of civil-libertarian and progressive; see one of my other replies for more) viewpoint automatically earns the poster some derogatory label. Who would want to engage in discussion when this is the inevitable result? Ad hominem comments like yours stifle discussion instead of promoting it, leaving only those who agree with your views in the thread.
This right here is what gets us echo chambers.
Congratulations, you have political opinions. Despite your claims elsewhere, you’re not “politically neutral.” Nor do you believe, in practice, that political opinions do not belong on HN.
Your underlying point is correct of course, but can you please make your substantive points without snark, and avoid the flamewar style? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Of course the right in the US talk utter nonsense about the British cities being dangerous etc.
On the other hand, automatic disdain for the hegemony is a pretty progressive lean.
This is why summarily labeling folks as "nazis", "racists", "genocide supporters", etc. doesn't advance the conversation; it shuts it down, and my feeling is that's why we're seeing the types of political threads we see on HN (that are dominated by like-minded individuals ranting against whatever cause they happen to espouse).
IMO, this siloing is not a sign of a healthy community. My preference would be to get back to more technical discussions and try to avoid discussion of politics insofar as that's possible.
But I don't speak for anyone else and can only control how I engage in discussion here. I choose to disengage in political threads. That other (non-HN-mainstream) voices do as well is probably one of the reasons why the self-reinforcing echo chambers exist in the first place.
That's my objection to political discussions on HN.
Again, I do not wish to debate whether Musk is a nazi (literal or figurative). I don't own or use any of his products, and he is free to espouse whatever views he wants, as we all are. You are absolutely entitled to develop and hold your own opinions regarding Musk and I don't want to attempt to convince you to change them.
Where I both disagree and agree with you is your statement that "the subject is debated again and again each time it appears". This may be true in general, but my point is that here on HN, it has become a truism that Elon performed a nazi salute. My point is that you're right that other outlets present the alternative view that I mentioned above, but I'm not sure ANY substantive debate regarding this specific action ever happened here, and even if it did once, the fact that it has now been stated as fact that "Elon gave a nazi salute" at least twice so far in this thread without anyone bringing attention to the fact that others might disagree with that interpretation does not lend credence to Drew's assessment that HN has been overrun with right-wing bias.
I don't think it's a correct formulation. The idea that this gesture was not a mistake is just the consensus. Here or everywhere else. Of course, "official" entities (like companies or official instance) will not openly take a position because it can hurt them. But it is just "politically correct" to avoid being clear on the subject, while the large majority, unofficially, know what happened.
Strangely, you seems to both saying that "political discussions should not happen here" and saying "people have political discussions and build their opinion also outside of HN, so if they present their opinion without redoing here the whole discussion, it is not valid". If people had discussions elsewhere and reached a conclusion, the fact that they share a consensus here does not mean that this consensus is a dogma.
I should mention though that I wasn't making a point about your comment (which I haven't really read) and certainly not about you personally. Rather, it's a general observation that has come up many times over the years.
sheafification's reply was specifically to me and specifically personal. (Every sentence was directed at me - not something that I wrote.) There was no "general observation" that I can see in his reply. For the record, here is his reply in its entirety:
> Congratulations, you have political opinions. Despite your claims elsewhere, you’re not “politically neutral.” Nor do you believe, in practice, that political opinions do not belong on HN.
Where is the "general observation that has come up many times over the years"? What part of this response read as "correct" to you, and why?
From my reading, it was an ad hominem generalization based on a flawed understanding of my previous post designed to dismiss my opinions based on some perceived contradiction. What about this is "correct"?