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Comment by reitoei | Hacker News Reader

Is that fair though? Would you consider a something like a online bee-keeping community or a MUD an 'echo chamber'? I think the phrase gets bandied about a bit too easily nowadays.

Alt-right forums have a specific agenda, the former would have none. I see HN in that regard, but that's just me.

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You don't think HN has an agenda? Everyone has an agenda. You just agree with this one.

I don't think it really does to be honest. That's just my personal experience with the site, we're obviously looking through different lenses. I can't agree or disagree with something I'm not aware of.

You can't see the agenda, but is part of it. An "agenda" don't need to be bad to most people outside the inner circle, which is exactly the case of SV and HN. They "just" want to hold the power and who benefits from the prosperity created.

Sure, everyone and every group has a de facto agenda. But the agenda of HN feels to me like "have productive, civil discourse, in a generally pro-technological advancement vein". The agenda of, say, /pol/, is much more directional and polarized (propagating racist and fascist memes, basically, with the broader goal of propagating racism and fascism). There's a much tighter focus and intent to the latter, which makes it feel much more like "an agenda" colloquially, and it seems like a distinction worth noting, rather than eliding it by saying "everyone has an agenda."

To me, both HN and Silicon Valley also propagate racism and fascism. It wasn't yesterday that all news about tech was the lack of diversity? When did Silicon Valley switched place from cause of the problem to be the cure? There is a long road ahead.

> But the agenda of HN feels to me like "have productive, civil discourse, in a generally pro-technological advancement vein"

I agree with this. That is why I'm here. But here we also have a lot of censorship and imposed moral and behavior rules frequently unfair toward some types of discussions or arguments.

An observation on the right is that any organization that is not explicitly right wing will over time drift into being left wing. I think it's correct.

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