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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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:
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?
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.
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.
"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."
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.
Elon "Sieg Heil"ed twice on national TV. Some labels are just accurate.
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]?
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.)
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.
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.
@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)?
this semantics lawyering would've worked before the DOGE fiasco, now it just seems transparent that you have a right wing worldview but don't wanna say it openly coz they are openly racist and fascistic now.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just so. Thanks Drew. Good to to find another one that can see ;) They live!
I wish n-gate.com was still active and posted regularly to the comments sections.
We lost a mirror in n-gate that was reflecting some of the ugly faces here back at some people that really needed it.
Silicon valley is weird.
Does any one else get confused between this guy and BurntSushi?
Unfortunately moderated out of existence in 10, 9, 8, 7....
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Upvotes do counter flags. It's just that in this case the flags overwhelmed the upvotes.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
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...
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?
I haven't read the article.
[flagged]
disagree
Yup. With public service like this? https://drewdevault.com/weird-guys/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49596826
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.
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.
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.
I find dogwhistle arguments interesting. If someone is hearing dogwhistles, maybe they're the dog.
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.
"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."
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.
Elon "Sieg Heil"ed twice on national TV. Some labels are just accurate.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.)
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.
@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)?
this semantics lawyering would've worked before the DOGE fiasco, now it just seems transparent that you have a right wing worldview but don't wanna say it openly coz they are openly racist and fascistic now.
it's transparently avoiding moderation.
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.
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.
Yes. Flag everything political. From both sides. We are here for tech. Not Reddit level content.
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.
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.
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.
Maybe the volume is proportional to the impact each country has globally? (especially these years)
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
True. I actually don't read or enter threads for stuff I know will piss me off. So yeah makes sense.
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.
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.
every thread has some “low calorie” comments. The only ones being flagged are the political ones
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)
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.
It's a business promotion platform from the very beginning.
"The purpose of a system is what it does"
By this metric, HN is not a business promotion platform.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Why are anti-capitalists like that?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So, only left wing ideology is allowed on the internet? See the issue here?
I've done my part. Make sure you flag and do yours.