Why is Hacker News like that?

195 pointsposted 5 hours ago
by caution
(drewdevault.com)

106 Comments

romanhn

4 hours ago

The flagged comments given as examples are exactly the type I don't want to see here. Not because they are wrong (they are not), but because they are boring, low-calorie declarations of obvious that add very little value to the topic at hand. It's like every mention of an iPhone got a comment about poor conditions of Chinese assembly workers. These, and the Musk rants, absolutely belong on threads about those topics, but let's not turn every thread into a holy war - you're just pushing people that already agree with you away.

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.

SirFatty

24 minutes ago

"I think it's an interesting discussion."

Except for comments you want hidden because you think they are "boring" or "low-calorie".

jjuel

4 hours ago

But couldn't a bunch of posts that are just coming here to lift up one of Elon's products also be counter productive? You can never tell if someone is genuine when reviewing a product he put out. I think that is a big problem as well.

romanhn

4 hours ago

Absolutely. That's when I use my dang-given right to flag left and right. Or if that doesn't work, ignore. I don't think I've entered any Grok thread in ages. But I also can't say that I've seen a ton of them, so maybe the ecosystem is working?

jjuel

4 hours ago

True. I actually don't read or enter threads for stuff I know will piss me off. So yeah makes sense.

jmyeet

3 hours ago

One thing I've noticed is that people will engage in thread arson to kill submissions they don't agree with. When I see some of these low value comments, I check their comment history and often they have reasonable comments on other things.

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.

ianjbutler

3 hours ago

> 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.

dang

3 hours ago

> people will engage in thread arson to kill submissions they don't agree with. When I see some of these low value comments, I check their comment history and often they have reasonable comments on other things

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.

acuteaura

an hour ago

I mostly avoid this place these days, but there are certain topics where people hyperrationalize, i.e. they (silently) accuse others of being reactionary because an argument looks like reaction to them on the surface.

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.

shepherdjerred

3 hours ago

every thread has some “low calorie” comments. The only ones being flagged are the political ones

minimaxir

3 hours ago

That's extremely untrue, look at thread about AI/models with showdead and you'll see tons of flagged low-effort comments (in both pro and anti-AI directions)

happytoexplain

4 hours ago

This is a good example of a person observing a community, slotting the whole thing into one of a small handful of political categories based on the relatively tiny proportion of comments that lean one way or another, and then claiming that the community has changed or is hypocritical when it turns out people tend to have more dynamic opinions than that.

kdavis

4 hours ago

Unfortunately moderated out of existence in 10, 9, 8, 7....

dang

4 hours ago

Yes in the sense that users flagged it, but not in the sense that moderators penalized it. I didn't see it until someone emailed a couple minutes ago.

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.

jakobdabo

3 hours ago

IMHO, for fairness, upvotes should be the vouches countering the flags. I think unless the amount of flags is really significant, they shouldn't have priority over the 117 upvoters (and counting) who are clearly interested to have this discussion here.

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.

minimaxir

3 hours ago

Flags having a stronger influence than upvoting is a necessary algorithmic check against genuinely bad behavior/brigading, not disagreement. In general it works as intended, which is the best you can do without something potentially worse.

dleeftink

3 hours ago

> necessary algorithmic check

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).

[0]: https://share.google/aimode/cs9cKsvGMNRHs8OG1

unified101

3 hours ago

I'm curious - Do you have a reaction to the specfic point of suggestions that were brought to you, per the article? Do you recall specific ones, and if they were considered/deliberated?

dang

3 hours ago

I haven't read the article.

dleeftink

3 hours ago

Wouldn't excessive/above average flagging rather indicate a post is controversial/counter narrative enough to warrant longer front page exposure? It certainly seems to have gotten the people going in the short time it was up, and it's not a secret that early vocal users can be quite generous with the flag button.

GeoAtreides

3 hours ago

>I'm not going to remove the flags, because they are clearly an authentic community reaction

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.

dang

3 hours ago

Exactly correct! That is the principle: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

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...

freeli

4 hours ago

This doesn't mirror my experience, which is that most posts and comments criticizing the current administration and conservatives in general get significant positive engagement. There are few posts taking the opposite side, and those that try often get downvoted to oblivion.

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.

graemep

an hour ago

> In addition, just look at all the anti-US posts/comments. Other countries do not get the same treatment in the same volume

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.

muhis

14 minutes ago

I do not believe one can really be politically neutral. One can be blind to their political inclinations, but what would being neutral even mean? Everyone has their views and values.

happytoexplain

4 hours ago

Right, I think it's basically just the permanent phenomenon that if a community is mostly politically on side A, then they over-perceive the presence of B-leaning comments and the downvoting of A-leaning comments, and vice versa. "Wow, HN is so B", says the A guy, because HN is 20% B. I've seen this exact same thing in conservative-leaning communities regarding liberal content.

Juliate

3 hours ago

> Other countries do not get the same treatment in the same volume. The US is a punching bag here. It's tiresome.

Maybe the volume is proportional to the impact each country has globally? (especially these years)

freeli

3 hours ago

This might be true, but then you would expect to see some proportion of pro-US posts as well, right? I can't remember the last significant one.

cauch

3 hours ago

I think the US, right now, is just exceptionally bad (not just the president, the whole culture, divisiveness, weaponized fake news, ...).

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.

freeli

3 hours ago

Take what you dislike about the US and then compare it against:

- 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.

officeplant

13 minutes ago

>This is not to say that the US shouldn't be criticized. Let's have that discussion. But why on HN?

This is foremost a tech focused website, and currently the US is basically tech-Hitler for lack of a better term. So it makes sense we would come up in discussion as the current thread of techno-fascism works its way through all portions of American existence.

cauch

32 minutes ago

Also, was it the case during Obama? If not, why? Right now, in other countries, they have negative impacts from tariffs, wars, economical crises, ... that seem all be linked to bad management from the US government.

So, yes, in HN, when talking about some subject, for example Grok, then, yes, the fact that Grok is instrumentalised in the culture war is _on topic_ and people will discuss it. This is not the result of a conspiracy against US. This is just the result of the fact that US is really shit right now.

cauch

2 hours ago

Not sure what is your point: all of these are also strongly discussed.

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?

graemep

an hour ago

In think you are missing the point with regard to immigration in Europe. American liberals have long talked about Trumps immigration policies and rhetoric as uniquely bad. They do not seem to known EU countries have border walls, or that the UK will separate families. Very few countries have birthright citizenship as broad as that of the US. This may have changed with the powers given to ICE but it was not true in Trumps first term.

Of course the right in the US talk utter nonsense about the British cities being dangerous etc.

cauch

36 minutes ago

I don't think it can be the point, as the point was "bad things happen in other places and yet people don't care about it, they criticize US because it's the current trend".

One of my reaction was that one of their examples (immigration in UK/EU) seems to be an exact counter-examples where US people are overestimating crises that are outside of US and point the fingers.

As for the situation in UK/EU, a real reaction that happened in UK/EU is that if something like ICE was to happen in UK/EU, the population will never accept that (they may be wrong, but they are right that there is something there). Not because immigration laws are less unfair or less cruel in UK/EU, but because in US, there was not even the decency of pretending a due-process was needed. You can deport in UK/EU, but it is done by people who follow the rules and who are not particularly "against" people they deport. With ICE, it looks like cowboys who openly don't care about due-process. In UK/EU, the machine can be cruel. In US, there is no machine at all, just people openly showing they don't care.

AnimalMuppet

2 hours ago

> And why do these other topics never result in substantive engagement?

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.

freeli

an hour ago

I think you're 100% correct here. Thank you for expressing this point of view so succinctly.

JeremyNT

2 hours ago

Have you considered that perhaps the US is really doing a poor job lately, and so pro-US posts would be less common?

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.

Juliate

3 hours ago

Hmmm, it's a genuine, not provocative, question: as an outsider from the US, I genuinely can't say what the USA (as a state, as a government) have done in the past few years, that is unequivocally worth of praise?

freeli

3 hours ago

Nothing any country/government does will be unequivocally worthy of praise. That's a goal too far.

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.

Juliate

3 hours ago

I agree also that HN shouldn't be a forum for political discussions, but I think that the political nature of technology, and the political nature of the decisions/choices made by the companies driving technology, should not be avoided/silenced.

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.

freeli

3 hours ago

I agree with you that the HN political slant I see defies single labels. On the one hand, there is a significant civil-liberty lean (personal privacy and gun rights, for example) which is not generally associated with (US) "progressivism".

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.

officeplant

4 minutes ago

>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

We're all tired of fighting for survival, and under no circumstances will we stop calling a spade a spade. Beating around the bush is how we got here in the first place.

ronnier

4 hours ago

Yes. Flag everything political. From both sides. We are here for tech. Not Reddit level content.

cauch

3 hours ago

But shouldn't anything about Grok be flagged as political then? (or rather: where do you put the threshold?)

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.

Leonard_of_Q

3 hours ago

If only, but that won't work because a certain group considers dissenting opinions not as political but ethically deplorable speech and votes and flags it down while defending their own political stance which in turn is voted up more than down and remains in the threads. The result is a biased platform. Notwithstanding the article the bias is mostly (possibly performatively) "progressive" with some cave outs related to startup culture, venture capitalism and whatever PG has to say on the subject.

baddie_twoshoes

4 hours ago

This is almost comically backwards. HN is very pro-union, like reddit. In fact, it's pretty much the same users and political opinions as reddit.

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.

jmyeet

4 hours ago

[flagged]

econ

3 hours ago

I see a futuristics ban on twitter where the reason stated was that user got grok to say something obvious.

Like Facebook (but worse) they barely allow users to interact. The primary goal is to build profiles for other purposes.

freeli

3 hours ago

Here's a great example (and I don't mean to pick on you personally, jmyeet).

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.

keeda

3 hours ago

You know what people do when they make a comment or gesture that is widely seen as something horrible, even if it’s a misinterpretation?

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.

koonsolo

2 hours ago

Observe the force and facial expression. This was not a pleasant "my heart goes out to you", this was clearly a very agressive salute, even more agressive than how most real nazi's would do it.

So no, the gesture was pretty clear.

worik

35 minutes ago

Ask Brittons, and Germans, about Elon interference

Supporting far right parties, stone cold racists and bigots. Spreading lies frankly and openly, doing his best to undermine the democracies

He does not live there, has no right to be involved in their politics. Interfering for sadistic fun, it seems

The damage he did (in a ketamine haze it seems) to federal programmes with such astounding carelessness...

It is no wonder that he has such a negative following. He is a genuinely bad person, and being so rich, powerful and hungtry for more he is news worthy

Juliate

3 hours ago

Everyone can have many explanations that make sense in their perspective. That doesn't make those explanations right per se.

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.

graemep

an hour ago

In Elon's case who he funds is very revealing. The main anti-immigration party in the UK turned down his money because it came with the condition that they allow extremists to join. He now funds and supports those outright racists.

freeli

3 hours ago

I don't know Elon well enough to comment on his political views. My point was simply this: "Elon sieg-heiled showing that he's a Nazi" has become dogma around here, because nobody is engaging in constructive debate about it, because the opposing viewpoints are either not making it to the screens, or not being offered in the first place.

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.

cauch

2 hours ago

> My point was simply this: "Elon sieg-heiled showing that he's a Nazi" has become dogma around here, because nobody is engaging in constructive debate about it, because the opposing viewpoints are either not making it to the screens, or not being offered in the first place.

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)

freeli

2 hours ago

I think I understand what you're saying, but I have to disagree with parts of it.

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.

cauch

an hour ago

> but my point is that here on HN, it has become a truism that Elon performed a nazi salute.

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.

cauch

3 hours ago

An interesting aspect is that not only the far-left is thinking it was a nazi salute, the far-right too, welcoming it and seeing it as Musk supporting them.

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.)

sheafification

3 hours ago

> Well, I interpreted it differently.

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.

dang

3 hours ago

> Congratulations, you have political opinions. Despite your claims elsewhere,

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.

freeli

2 hours ago

@dang - "Your underlying point is correct, of course". Could you please explain which statement of sheafification's, specifically, is correct (besides the fact that I have political opinions, which I do not believe is mutually exclusive with being politically neutral)?

dang

2 hours ago

Yes, happy to - but I'll be offline for most of the next hour, so it might have to be later.

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.

freeli

2 hours ago

With respect (especially for the work you do here), this isn't ok.

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"?

juancn

2 hours ago

If you're far left the center is right, if you're far right, the center is left.

feverzsj

4 hours ago

It's a business promotion platform from the very beginning.

PaulDavisThe1st

4 hours ago

"The purpose of a system is what it does"

By this metric, HN is not a business promotion platform.

Juliate

3 hours ago

It's a promotion platform for a specific way of conducting business, and for the liberation of these businesses from democratic oversight (if not the other way around). And in that perspective, that's politics.

PaulDavisThe1st

3 hours ago

I probably don't disagree with that.

However, that doesn't equate to what I believe was being implied: HN as a business promotional tool specifically for YCombinator.

doublerebel

4 hours ago

It’s because people keep amplifying meta-discussions instead of focusing on the topic at hand. Hence, this article as example. I shouldn’t even be commenting.

gessha

3 hours ago

I don't think leftists/progressives are nonexistent on this site. Maybe some of them don't want to bring politics everywhere because it's tiring and unproductive.

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.

omnimus

3 hours ago

I also don't think they are non existent. But there is also another factor of timezones. I have the impression that there are big differences between the continents. Like depending on time the most top comments might be leaning much more left or right.

gessha

3 hours ago

The definition of leftists and their distribution would be a fun topic over drinks. Another thing you can consider if leftists in one timezone login at the same time as leftists in another timezone. The rabbit hole is ever deeper.

PaulDavisThe1st

3 hours ago

Although Drew's points don't seem actually wrong to me, I would say that a far bigger problem for HN is the way in which the discourse is dominated by excessively confident and passively authoritative comments that are actually somewhere between "not really correct" and "not even wrong".

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.

dang

17 minutes ago

Yes—but a confounding factor is that people tend to have strong feelings about things they know a lot about. This makes it hard to tell what part of one's reaction is to wrongness/ignorance vs. having one's feelings offended.

To mention some (hopefully safe) examples, I know things about certain programming languages, and smoke comes out my ears when someone posts about how APL or K programs are "unreadable", or that Lisp macros lead to code no one else can understand.

FLeXMurphy

2 hours ago

Upvoted for obvious achshtually Gell-Mann bait.

tim333

26 minutes ago

>the system at Hacker News amplifies right wing politics and bigotry

I can't say I get that impression. You don't get any Trump is great kind of stuff and Musk gets slagged off. I suppose it depends on what you think is right wing.

pianom4n

an hour ago

It's wild to get a glimpse into the bubbles some people live in

FLeXMurphy

3 hours ago

I've done my part. Make sure you flag and do yours.

jauntywundrkind

4 hours ago

I'm not sure how much HN/YComb really does put it's finger on the scale.

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.

esalman

4 hours ago

Silicon valley is weird.

jmyeet

4 hours ago

When it comes to submissions and comments, "political" or "controversial" is what you disagree with. As the article notes, capitalism (as just one example) is taken as a given. Anything else is "political".

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.

1attice

4 hours ago

Just so. Thanks Drew. Good to to find another one that can see ;) They live!

forgetfreeman

4 hours ago

I wish n-gate.com was still active and posted regularly to the comments sections.

theideaofcoffee

4 hours ago

We lost a mirror in n-gate that was reflecting some of the ugly faces here back at some people that really needed it.

OutOfHere

2 hours ago

Shadowbanning is an extremely evil and inhumane practice that should be discontinued if it is still done, not just here but anywhere. Human beings need to be treated like human beings, at least deserving of a regular ban. If you don't understand, then wait until it happens to you.

dang

27 minutes ago

When an account has an established history, we tell them that we're banning them and why. Examples:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

We use shadowbanning (i.e. banning an account without saying so) in specific cases such as spammers and serial trolls. I don't think that's inhumane. In the case of spammers, telling them would only lead to more spam. As for serial trolls, they are usually aware of which of their stable of accounts have been banned yet vs. not.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

But when you say "wait until it happens to you", I'm curious if that means that we banned one of your accounts without telling you so? It would be interesting to look up, if so.

bluecalm

2 hours ago

It's because those comments insert politics and character attacks in threads they don't belong to. They just derive the discussion.

>>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.

PaulDavisThe1st

21 minutes ago

There are two high level takes on Trump.

One is that he's just a normal US politician, within the range previously seen, he was elected president via the usual mechanisms and will leave office and be replaced by someone else, again via the usual mechanisms. His policies and actions may (or may not) be more extreme than most previous presidents, and many may disagree vehemently with them, but that's the nature of representative democracy.

The other is that he's a major departure from previous elected presidents, via a combination of his corruption, illegal behavior and openly racist and sexist language. People who see Trump in this way also likely feel that the SCOTUS has aided and abetted him in acts that are plainly unconstitutional (despite overwhelming numbers of decisions by lower courts against him). They fear that his language around elections, and particularly even his raising the possibility that he would run again, mark him as having crossed a line that makes it impossible to consider him an ordinary elected president. Many people who feel this way believe that Trump and others in his administration are openly fascist and are working to bring about a fascist form of government within the USA.

If you hold the second view, then the fact that around half the voting population view him as a "perfectly normal" politician is itself a substantial and terrifying issue.

VCFundedGenYer

3 hours ago

This should not be flagged and I veto the decision. This article is spot on.

HN has a massive problem where it's low key fostering right wing ideology with inadequate moderation. I'm flagging what I can.

happytoexplain

an hour ago

It's OK to foster right-wing ideology, or left-wing ideology. That's clear even if it's true that one of them is "more correct" or "more moral" on average. But regardless, it should go without saying, and it's disturbing that you are implying otherwise.

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"?

accountrequired

3 hours ago

So, only left wing ideology is allowed on the internet? See the issue here?

accountrequired

4 hours ago

>It’s no surprise that Hacker News favors capitalism, opposes labor, and objects to questioning the privileges of its largely white, male, middle-class audience. It’s “political” and “ideological” for it to do anything else.

Why are anti-capitalists like that?

duendefm

4 hours ago

Leftism, progressism or wtv tries to remove all social value from individuals for their beliefs. Leftists tried to make the world lose respect for people like J. K. Rowling, Elon Musk and recently DHH. If some people say something that is not illegal but is deemed to be offending by leftists, they go tribal gang on that person and try to devalue all they work. I myself prefer to live in a world where people is free to express their thoughts even if they are being retarded at it.

foul

3 hours ago

Then they start to use their "well-earned" money to bend the world to their worldview, but "it's their right!". Of the people you bring up, i've been affected just by Musk (his endeavours are a net contributor for global warming), I'm still suspecting you should get fucked with your freely expressed opinion.

brcmthrowaway

4 hours ago

Does any one else get confused between this guy and BurntSushi?

mitchellst

4 hours ago

"I hold views that are acceptable and conventional in most elite/academic circles. There's an organization and network of people who hold different views from mine. I don't like theirs. They don't seem to like mine, and sometimes say so out loud. Also, they have a website that looks like it's from 2005 but is popular, at least among them. For these reasons, I'm big mad."

ecshafer

4 hours ago

Absurd article.

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.

happytoexplain

4 hours ago

I think it's not crazy to say they both hold opinions that a Nazi might hold, but that's also usually just an excuse to insult somebody, rather than engage (I'm thinking more of DHH - I don't follow Musk aside from his Nazi salutes, so maybe he's closer to a holistic Nazi). The point is not that one can not equate any right-leaning opinion to a Nazi's opinion - obviously they both share some opinions. The point is that the umbrella insult "Nazi" is used to mean "you're wrong and evil, so I don't even have to engage", when often that's going too far. It's an escape hatch.

That was rambly, but I'm saying I 75% agree with you.