Hackernews is living proof. Pre-election, you could voice a contrary opinion here and have a discussion. Post-election, even the faintest wrongthink shibboleth gets silently downvoted into oblivion.
When I see complaints like this I always look at the history. Usually the account in question has a pattern of posting flamebait and/or snark. In that case you needn't reach for political bias or 'wrongthink' to explain why the community downvotes such comments. They get downvoted simply because they break the site rules.
That, and wrongthink need not limit itself to politics. On HN we have it for technologies as well!
I've voiced my opposition to what I consider unrestrained capitalism and ideological free-marketerism and been downvoted many times over the years preceding the election.
I've had dang come down on me for expressing my views (it's his and the moderators' prerogative but I'm not stopping either). It doesn't bother me because that's who I am. I'd rather folks offer their disagreements than downvote my comments because that's what I'm here for: discussion and synthesis with the ideas and arguments put forth by folks who share some or none of my interests.
Even you mention "sympathy for the devil." I don't know if that's recognition that some viewpoints are truly toxic and unworthy of even basic respect and consideration or an merely an allusion to the down-voting of un-conventional views and thoughts.
For me, there is nothing interesting to discuss about ideas or views espousing racism or gender-bigotry, but those are different than discussing the factual situations of ethnicity and gender in our society as determined by historical legacies and cultural forces. I will respect the right of an individual to hold bigoted views but that doesn't mean I must respect the individual, either.
A balanced discourse is (was) no longer possible. (It's getting a bit better again after some ramnifications became plain to see in some every-day situations).
I think lately we're not meeting those qualifications, so maybe it is best not to engage, since discourse would not be productive.
While up to a ~year ago the position of "we must never ever put limits on immigration!" was hugely overrepresented in the media and by politicians. It became quite apparent that the majority of the populus does not support this stance, and that it's neither wise nor a good move to attempt the Nazikeule whenever anyone says something ever-so-slightly different from "we must never ever put limits on immigration!".
Hackernews is predominantly right wing & conservative.
People with strong views simply notice the comments they dislike much more strongly. And sometimes they pass around links to their friends to 'prove' it—which proves nothing, of course, but does strongly reinforce their perception. Once reinforced, these perceptions seem not to change.
On HN the divisions are exacerbated by this being so international a community. Only a third, last I checked, is in the US, and only a small minority in SV. So what we're all encountering here is not just polarization in the US, but much disagreement across national and cultural divides.
p.s. Unless I'm mistaken about the account, we didn't ban you. Nor have we shadowbanned accounts for years (except new accounts that appear to be trolling or spamming). When an account has been around for a while, we tell people we banned them.
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Edit: while I'm thinking about this...
Subtler factors exacerbate these perceptions too. HN isn't siloed—we have no subreddits, no following/blocking—just one big place where everyone sees the same things. Because of that, we're all more likely on HN to encounter comments from people we don't normally mix with, except perhaps on the battlefield. Reading what the 'other side' posts is not fun; it's painful. It gets right in your face and feels like being attacked. It seems to take only a few cases of this before it overflows into one's image of the site itself.
That association makes sense emotionally: I come to this place, I feel pain and anger, therefore this is a hateful place. But it's also just what one would expect from the numbers, which is why the reaction is so clockwork-reliable, as I said above. The people with opposite views to yours are feeling just the same anger and pain.
We see this not only about politics, but about programming languages, large companies, one's own work, and everything else people feel strongly about. We're all in one of those tricky spots where human feelings and statistics don't go well together, and for the most part don't realize it.
I don't post comments on HN to stir the pot. I post comments on HN in the hope of getting other perspectives. A comment with a downvote and a reply is more valuable than a comment with upvotes and no replies. It's not like I can redeem HN points for cash and prizes.
I think I can do an OK job of not being an asshole, but I honestly have no idea what is or isn't going to piss people off or classify as flamebait here. So, if those are the stakes now, I will just have to accept my place on the shitlist.
I wish that there were some sort of metamoderation system. I downvote the mods whenever they post about abusing their power, but I don't know if that even has an effect, or if moderators' posts are immune from downvotes.
It's been around a long time, but I guess it's a bit fiddly? I'm not sure why other sites haven't adopted similar processes.
We’ve got to figure our way out of this, all around. Even more so to tackle issues like those addressed in the submission and so clearly on display in this thread as well. An early comment lamented the current situation:
> ”Hopefully we're still at the point where we can sensibly discuss a WSJ article.”
Well, maybe not it we just complain about it rather than making contributions that make the situation better. Of course it’s important to note that there’s an issue. (Bad analogy imminent!) Bug reports are necessary. At the end of the day we’ve got to dig in and fix those bugs and close the tickets, and make the system more robust.
A confounding twist with the system we’re working on makes it hard for us to disentangle beliefs from behaviors. It’s too easy to conflate the bad behavior of those we disagree with from their beliefs. And sometimes they are guilty of bad behavior. And we also need to realize that we ourselves might be guilty of behaving badly, and work on improving that so we can be more effective in understanding and be understood.
And I’ve increasingly tried to keep in mind that there are some games we play to win, and others we play to keep playing: Discourse in the small and society in the large is most definitely the latter. The goal is not to defeat our opponents, however they may be defined: it’s to figure out how to effectively make the game better. And like any rule change, everyone needs to be persuaded that the new rules are are a good idea.
I encourage you to work on some of the open tickets. Pull requests welcome!
(Thanks for your patience. Please accept the analogies only as far as they work and are useful.)
Edit: you're right about account karma. When it gets negative enough, comments get killed by software, which is close enough to shadowbanning that it would look the same externally. That case is rather rare and I forgot about it.
Oh, that's interesting, I would have thought 2/3 or more. I'd be fascinated to see a breakdown by country; is there one online somewhere? [looks] Ah, there was one in 2011. Maybe I could do one of those polls 'What country do you live in', doesn't seem to be a recent one.
ps I didnt stay long at all on Quora or the StackExchanges, from the amazingly inept modding. Here it's awesome, inspiring even. Thank you!
Uh, that's not my impression. My impression is that the pro-Damore posters say he should not have been fired for the views he expressed. And they're not the dominant opinion; rather it seems neither the pro- or anti-Damore opinions are dominant.
The irony is not obvious so here it is:
You want Damore to be ex-communicated from Google, for having an opinion you disagree with. People of HackerNews have decided to ex-communicate YOU, for having an opinion they disagree with. (Assuming that's what happened on HackerNews, and not that you were voicing your opinion in a manner that's counter-productive)
Do you see how you're crying about the very same behaviour you're all for, when it's somebody else?
The double-irony is that you're allowed to post on HackerNews again, and Damore is not back at google!
What concerns me most is equality of all people, and liberation of all people from systems of oppression. James Damore furthered an oppressive system (patriarchy) by perpetuating sexist ideas that attacked and hurt women at Google. With all the stuff about free speech or whatever, the opinion that he wanted to advocate for was nothing more than old school sexism: women are on average worse engineers because of their biology, so any discrepancies of outcome is a result of their natural inferiority, not broken social and economic structures. Is that really a valuable, constructive opinion that should be inside the marketplace of ideas at Google? What kind of company culture does that lead to? One in which discrepancies and injustices can be rationalized and justified through "innate differences" and where women who experience sexism and discrimination would feel more uncomfortable expressing their concerns.
It's hard to reply to justice warrior-talk without being incredibly condescending. Can you slow down for one minute and define what you mean by 'equality of all people'?
We have 2 genders, not 1, might be a good starting point.
Let's follow that up with how you know what all people want out of life, that you want them liberated from systems of whatever? Or you're interested in doing for people, what they don't want done to them? How does that work with liberating them from oppression exactly?
-financial compensation for housework/child-rearing -reduced hours for the primary caregiver at the same level of salary after childbirth (usually the woman) -equal pay for women mandated by law (pass the ERA) -much stronger policies against sexual harassment -more women in positions of power -full subsidy for menstruation products & birth control -paid maternity leave for all workers -universal healthcare -comprehensive sex positive and consent focused sex education in public schools
I could go on, but the main point is men & male society control politics, science, the economy, etc, so the whole society is predominantly oriented around men. A lot of shifts are more cultural (like attitudes towards harassment and sexism) which is harder to make into concrete policy proposals.