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Comment by shas3 | Hacker News Reader

HN conversations, on the whole have almost none of the bigotry (racism, homophobia, misogyny) of other forums. Yet, thread after thread seems to contain xenophobic posts. Usually it is in discussions about H1B or foreign students in the US. It is unfortunate that a generally well-educated crowd has these bad apples. I have linked to offensive conversations in my comments elsewhere on HN about this and I won't belabor.

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Well I give the benefit of the doubt and assume that the motivation is primarily economic rather than xenophobic.

As a H1B worker, I know I am depressing wages for Americans. Not just by increasing the labor supply, but also by having a weaker negotiation position than I would have as a citizen or as a permanent resident.

The "STEM shortage" is pure fantasy. The US should only take in the very best people, those who end up hired by top companies at competitive salaries, and give them permanent residency quickly. The people who come in with low salaries to replace American workers, like in the Disney case, should never have been given an H1B. That sort of abuse is going to end up bringing down the entire program.

Accusation of bigotry are just a means of controlling the conversation using taboos.

>HN conversations, on the whole have almost none of the bigotry (racism, homophobia, misogyny) of other forums.

People are people. Xenophobia just happens to be the discrimination that this community accepts.

This community is divided on some of these issues but it's not fair to say that it "accepts" xenophobia.

Perhaps you do not accept it, and have some rank around here. But I think it's accepted generally. Of course no one will admit as much.

I'm sure you're following these threads. They're filled with xenophobia. For example, in an article covering similar material currently on the front page, the top comment calls H1Bs "scabs", and it is unquestioned. Contrast this with when someone criticizes some feminist policy on these boards; they're called out pretty quickly. Being thought of as "sexist" is taboo in SV; being a "xenophobe" is just patriotic.

This is just one of many "communities" I frequent. HN is very self-righteous about the level of conversation and discourse here. For the most part, it's pretty good. But introduce the right topic, and you'll quickly realize that the people here can stoop pretty low.

I see more of HN than anyone else does (probably by far), and am pretty sure you're falling prey to the bias of generalizing about HN based on what stands out to you. It's not that the comments you're observing don't exist; it's that we all have a Maxwell's Demon in our heads who routes obnoxious bits to one compartment of our memory and unobjectionable bits to another.

Your claim about SV is also far from true, in my observation; the opposite is much closer to true. Generalizations about HN and SV often go hand in hand, and that's another fallacy: they're two worlds that overlap less than you'd think, and also conflict.

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Edit: a later name for this Maxwell's Demon analogy is the 'notice-dislike' bias: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

More on 'demons' here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

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