I remember when HN did not have a political agenda. Right or wrong, this used to be mainly about startups. Now its become a highly political message board
The concern about HN becoming too political or not political enough is as old as HN. There are at least as many users complaining that we're suppressing all the political stories and what not. I wrote more about this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13516969 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13522433 if anyone's interested.
I'm a hn user since at least 9.8 years ago (my first HN handle was different than current, which is 7 years old).
To my impression as a relatively apolitical person, the site has become MUCH more political in the past year. I may be wrong in that though.
It's an election year.
Some of the policies and statements on display are extremely divisive.
Divisiveness breeds discontent at all levels, discussion, intimidation, outright violence.
Now, it is clear that YC leadership has taken a highly liberal stand. I won't make a judgement on liberal or republican, but it feels more and more extreme. When an organization leans either direction too hard, it loses its purity. YC is becoming the liberal version of the Koche Brothers. HN is reflecting that in YC's movement.
I'm sure that Sam Altman and the rest of your team feel that it is worth it, but in my opinion, overt political support by an organization feels like a losing long-term strategy.
I guess we will see
How do you figure? It seems more that the GOP has driven off of a sanity cliff, and the "liberal" party is the only party left for sane people to join.
I would be very afraid of anyone who thinks that protecting the rights guaranteed by the Constitution is "highly liberal". You do realize that the ACUL has been known to defend the rights of KKK and Nazi party members too, right? They stand up for everyone's rights, not just liberals.
There were lots of civil liberties eroded during Obama's presidency, but YC & Sam Altman at no point in time stood up and said anything or did anything like they are doing now.
Donald Trump's order is not conservative, and opposing it is not liberal. The order is authoritarian. This is not a conservative vs liberal fight in any way and the ACLU is not a liberal organization. If you want to be cynical about it, this is a business move. They didn't stand up in the past because Obama's policies didn't threaten their business model like Trump's do.
The rest of your comment is too political for me to comment on.
I think it's uncontroversial that there are likely a large number of HN members who have favorable opinions of Y Combinator. That said, I don't see evidence of Y Combinator exercising any kind of persuasion or manipulation of the members where one can reasonably say that HN members are following Y Combinator's lead. And there's enough vociferous, contentious, argumentative political discussion on HN that it's clear to me that HN doesn't represent a single bloc of anything other than all participating in the HN forums.
As for YC becoming the liberal version of the Koch brothers, I think it's hard to underestimate the difference in scale. In January 2015, the Koch brothers budge for the 2016 campaign was nearly $900 million.[0] Along with Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers largely bankrolled the Tea Party into national government[1] in 2010.
Another significant difference, in my opinion, is that the Koch brothers themselves are not very vocal or public. They operate largely behind the scenes. Y Combinator has been much more vocal about what they're doing.
And it bears keeping in mind that YC has kept Peter Thiel on as a part-time partner: if YC's motivations were purely political, I think it's fair to say they'd have cut ties with Thiel just as so many have been clamoring for them to do.
All said, I don't think the comparison has much merit.
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/27/us/politics/kochs-plan-to...
I do appreciate your comment
Discussing politics is not the same as having an agenda.
> Right or wrong, this used to be mainly about startups.
I don't recall such a time and I've been here quite long.
> Now its become a highly political message board
This is most likely a reaction to real world developments involving a large number of HN participants.
Just like HN isn't a San Francisco local affair and yet when BART has issues you can expect it to be upvoted.
It might not be a secret or pernicious agenda, but it seems people forget what agenda means.
Yes, that's an excellent point. It amounts to a denial of service attack on informed discourse.
From the hundreds of Big 4 employees who now can't return home or travel overseas, to the 110,000 answers submitted to StackOverflow from the now banned countries, this affects the industry.
I was very happy to see YC do their part in what will be a 4-8 year (at least) battle of attrition and will. The ACLU is one of the best advocates for the people, in a country where corporate and religious lobbying trumps most.
There are no vacuums anymore, if there ever were (which I doubt). If something is 'about' startups then it is by necessity also about the politics those companies are involved in, especially considering in the US companies are persons with certain rights of expression.
Thanks to the intertwining of capitalism with our representative democracy by way of lobbying, our everyday lives are politicized. Should we suppress these notions or engage with them?