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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

Such perceptions of HN are, as far as I can tell, in the eye of the beholder. People with different politics just find different samples to consider representative (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15585780, https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=...).

The statistical distribution known as HN isn't consistently political. But there is a contrarian dynamic. As soon as a theme appears, other commenters start posting objections to it. Once those appear, then contradictions of the contradictions show up (often with comments that begin "I can't believe that HN..." or some such). Circle of life on the internet.

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while I appreciate who you are, I've also been on this site almost since the very beginning. I almost never comment, and didn't start commenting for literally years because of the quite obvious political/economic biases of the main contributors, which has seemed in the long run to have held rather steady. There are outliers, of course, but I'd be willing to bet that the proportion of highest voted commenters identifying as pro-labor, let alone critical or hostile to capital, is going to be vanishingly small. especially given that it was originally called Startup News (or something along those lines). Grahams politics are also well known, and I've actually asked him, myself, directly, about them at a well known conference.

I'm also a little weirded out that someone who seems as scientifically/mathematically literate as you would link to a couple of comments as if the story of HNs political biases would be summed up or even broadly illuminated that way.

Again, I know who you are, I know what a pain in the ass the work you do here is, I just think that maybe you're a bit too close to the sun to see this one. My 2 cents.

I'm _the_ highest voted commenter on the site, by a weird and embarrassing margin, and I'm pro-labor (though not anti-capital).

which is not by itself indicative of anything other than regard for your opinions on security? Really man? I get that you want to go to bat for dang here, but way to sidestep my point, I said quote "the proportion of the highest voted commentors that are pro labor or hostile to capital will be vanishingly small." There's a fair amount of semantics around what that could mean in practice, but one person, who themselves complains about HN social/political biases on twitter on the regular does not a majority make.

edit: not to mention I noted in my post to dang that there will be outliers, which, again, you clearly are at an internet forum originally and still largely dedicated to startups, a demographic slice not exactly well known for their love of labor rights.

First against the wall! The Revolution will be sorting by HN karma.

I'm not from the US and I'm fairly left wing by HN standards (although I did co-found a VC backed startup - although quite a long time ago) and I'd have to agree with dang on this one - I don't really see any great consistency of political views on HN.

There are also quite a lot of comments and articles pointing out the negatives of working at startups and the risks of working with VCs - while I'd agree they are in the minority I don't think comments that are "hostile to capital" are necessarily shouted down.

> let alone critical or hostile to capital, is going to be vanishingly small

This is nowhere near true.

This is an interesting perspective but it doesn't really mesh with my experience. If I had to describe the typical political sympathies of HN, it would be "somewhat right of center on everything, except far left on tech policy" (e.g. strongly pro net neutrality [1], lukewarm on race/gender disparities in hiring [2]). Can you think of a big thread that drew a solidly left-leaning reaction on a social issue?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14754772

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=diversity&sort=byPopularity&pr...

Not really right.

Anti-surveillance, anti-war, mildly anti-consumerist, mildly pro-immigration, mildly anti-religion, anti-nationalism, anti-monopoly, anti-drug-war, anti-1%

Right-wing politicians campaign on the exact opposite of all of these positions. It's not too different than libertarian, but right has almost nothing in common with libertarian anymore.

Anything related to universal basic income? UBI is a hard left policy - it's essentially welfare+++

Much of the support for UBI comes from a segment of the libertarian right which sees it as a way to eliminate welfare bureaucracy and regulation (not just regulation in the public benefit space, but also minimum wages and some others.)

It's not really a “hard left” policy, it's more a policy of pragmatic libertarians on both left and right, opposed by both dogmatic libertarians (because it remains a public intervention, if lighter-touch than the status quo policies it would displace immediately or over time) and those on the left and right with a stronger preference for government control and direction.

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