Ask HN: How can we take the politics back out of HN? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How can we take the politics back out of HN?

9 pointsphyller17 comments

Lately more and more discussions have devolved into ideological flamewars based on political opinions and rumors. This thread is a perfect example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17488716

Someone casually mentions something inflammatory which "everyone knows is true", of course someone else needs to correct them, and then those of the original opinion need to correct them.

I've been guilty of this too, and lately have been deleting comments before I post them upon reflection. What am I gaining by trying to "fix" this person's worlds view?

Can't we all just be nerds talking about cool tech again?

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I've said it before and I'll said it again, I don't think one can decouple a professional community and politics. (or more appropriately, I don't think one SHOULD.)

Politics is the framework under which we go about our work. I'd say "cool tech" is rather reductionist for what YC encompasses, even the earliest discussions on this site were about fundraising, startup ecosystem growth, economic climate, of course cool tech is a part but just one facet. We were never "just nerds talking about tech", I'd argue we are something far more fascinating than that, in a similar way to how an emergent community of e.g. entrepreneurial accountants or farmers might be fascinating if it started to become a natural center of discussion and focus for a wider audience.

To try and ignore politics insofar as we have a hand in it (and especially given the current zeitgeist we absolutely do) is to abscond from our responsibility to try and guide policy in a better direction, to discuss topics as a community so that we _don't_ devolve into ideology driven filter bubbles or surrender these decisions to be made by a perhaps less benevolent group. I aspire to that we can hold this higher example and try to be a good force in spreading positive debate.

I'm always nervous to say "not talking about politics is how we got here" (although with such low voter participation rates that MAY be a somewhat fair statement) but not talking about politics at _this_ point seems like pushing the giant elephant in the room under the rug.

Not talking about politics here isn't the same thing as saying that this community should not talk politics. I don't think anybody on HN wants to sweep anything under the rug, or ignore any elephants in the room. But I also don't think anybody wants to spend all day dealing with doom and gloom and arguing about inane partisan bullshit. It would be nice to have some place as a refuge from that crap, where we can talk about "cool tech" and not have to deal with all the other stuff in that moment.

A few responses to that.

1. I'd echo from my first point, HN _never_ behaved as a "Refuge" the way you describe. If you're saying you'd like to see it changed to function as such, I can simply disagree on a precedent of "that's not how it got to be the HN we know and love", but this will likely end up being a subjective disagreement. Politics may have become _more_ central, but unfortunately I think we're going through a period where that's true in many aspects of life.

2. In that same vein, HN has become something of a town-square for things tech. The "you can discuss it, just not here" is like when people say "well you can find things on the internet, google will just block them." Sure, that's factually true, but if it in effect cuts 95% of people out of ever seeing that subject matter, are you still really allowing discussion?

3. I fear that by not talking about it the "insane partisan bullshit" will become more normalized, because the adult voices in the room have stepped out. It's for us to make sure that the discussions don't become "Crap."

4. re: doom and gloom, unfortunately, "we have to sleep in the bed we made." If the broader world seems to be doom and gloom, I'm of the opinion that should be faced down without flinching. I'm not one to try and sugarcoat, fundamentally, that's just my personality, and again, one can philosophically go about life differently, but the way I look at things, an "only positive aspects of cool tech" discussion board would be disingenuous to the true scope of our impact, and lacking in much of the subtlety and interesting depth of discussion that made HN so compelling to me over the last 5-10 years.

I'd echo from my first point, HN _never_ behaved as a "Refuge" the way you describe.

Speaking as someone who has been here from every nearly the beginning, my perception is that it was much closer to that in the past (compared to today).

I'm not one to try and sugarcoat,

I'm not talking about sugar-coating anything. I'm saying that (pretty much) no one wants to be immersed in that stuff all the time. And in years past, HN seemed to be a site where one could mostly focus on tech/business stuff, without so much of the political baggage. I'd like to see that again. I find that I can get enough political discussion on Facebook / Twitter / meatspace. But, "different strokes for different folks" I guess. The site will ultimately be what the community makes it.

my perception is that it was much closer to that in the past

(EDIT: On a second read of our discussion, we may even be just talking about slightly unrelated things, in that you're unhappy there's more politics period, and I'm trying to justify that by saying "it's the same subject matter, politics is just necessarily more a component". One could justifiably not care about that distinction; it just strikes me as meaningful)

I don't think you're wrong persay, and while I've only been here over the last 6-7 years I've read the first hundred posts thousands of times due to HN being my defacto "social scraping test", and with a sampling of the first 10 stories, I'd stand by my assertion that unfortunately politics has been taking a heavier hand in things that previously may have seemed uncorrupted.

to give some concrete examples (from the first 10 posts):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4 (Real estate costs in NY, still a common topic, but nimbyism/zoning is a central focus, largely political)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5 (Big-co aquisitions, now when discussed come alongside concerns re: consolidation, antitrust, etc)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6 (Forecasting software; while not specifically based off of private data, the discussion nowadays would likely pivot to that due to topical relevence)

tl;dr, I don't necessarily agree with how much you may be implying the content has shifted, I just think politics plays a much stronger role in said content, or in our awareness of it, but again, this is perceptual and I'm not going to tell you "you're wrong" in having been there yourself.

The site will ultimately be what the community makes it.

Yup, and I try to limit my corrosion of this to trying to sway opinion softly. This all comes down to, for me, being more scared about LACK of attention/action, than if some threads go sideways.

Sure, and likewise I can't say that you're "wrong". It is somewhat subjective. In that sense, it's possible for us to both be "right" at the same time.

Anyway, it's not - to me - a huge deal. There's a sort of change that I would like to see (I think), but I'm not so unhappy with the current state that I'm going to quit posting or anything. I mean, I'm here now, and in the end I'm pragmatic even when being so is a thorn in my own side. :-)

Aptly, and to me more indicative of _actual_ change (and somewhat sadder) than the politics about "now HN" is the fact that both of us have been greyed for what was, I think, a very reasonable discussion. (the fact that it's both gives me a chuckle while being slightly fascinating) The flagging/downvoting communities seem to have taken on a very reddit feel as opposed to what I rose-tintedly remember.

I kinda like politics here. Current amount/level, not zero and not more. I don't know.

Can't we all just be nerds talking about cool tech again?

That would be amazing, and I hope it happens. Even though I'm guilty of getting into ideological debates as well. I always feel dirty afterwards, even when I believe I'm right. I really would prefer to keep HN focused on tech / business, and keep the politics out as much as possible.

Tech and especially business are politics. Or at least so tightly coupled it's infantile to pretend like they exist in a vacuum.

Tech and especially business are politics.

In a pedantic sense, sure. You can always play reductionist games like that. "Everything is just atoms", right?

If you actually can't see that there's a difference between "geeks talking about cool tech" and the kind of ideologically driven political bickering that goes on here, I really don't know what to say. And anything I could say would be uncharitable, so I'll just stop here.

Like everyone else in this thread, I'm of the belief you don't come to the conclusion that tech is 'cool' without some ideological underpinning. And, in an open forum those underpinnings will be debated.

I suspect, that by "political bickering" you really mean "ideologies I don't agree with" (much like most people clamoring for a past civility that never existed). If you want an echo chamber, plenty of sites are around from that; they'll welcome you.

Like everyone else in this thread, I'm of the belief you don't come to the conclusion that tech is 'cool' without some ideological underpinning.

I'm pretty sure not everybody here believes that.

I suspect, that by "political bickering" you really mean "ideologies I don't agree with"

Your suspicion is incorrect.

If you want an echo chamber,

Who said anything about wanting an echo chamber?

Well, "cool" tech is very subjective and often based in some sort of tech ideology. Is Golang "cool"? I don't think so, but a lot of people do.

HN is flooded with posts like "Show HN: I made a web server in Go/Rust/Erlang". Clap clap, good for you. I find these articles quite worthless but leave them alone because hey, it's not like disk space on HN servers is a particularly limited resource. If some people want to talk about someone else's web server or yet-another-js-framework, that's no problem by me.

However, much of this sort of cheerleading is motivated by what can only be called ideology. For example, "Java is uncool and Oracle is bad" + "Rust is elite and Mozilla is cool" is a very common sort of opinion on Hacker News but this is really nothing to do with the technologies themselves. It's more based on a feeling that overtly wanting to make lots of money by owning IP is dirty and immoral, whereas giving it away for free and claiming you're motivated by an inherent love of openess and webbyness is pure and moral. This is really just politics in disguise.

Everything is political.

The current level is very good. Yes, there are some ideological clashes. Easily ignored.

What I see here is a fairly significant number of us see ideologies as reasoning tools, not means to better ends.

Secondly, the call for means and to those better ends are well represented.

More please. And I mean let it continue, not so much escalate.

At present, cool tech is no where near under threat. It is nice to get a look at politics here. That look is fairly unique. High value, so long as it does not break things.

I consistently read with great interest. Rarely comment. When I do, it is due to some take on the politics I find notable or resonant.

Also, I should mention ethics. That has come up here many times. Almost always good to read.

     And I mean let it continue, not so much escalate.

With the moderation encouraging such thoughtfulness, I agree.

There may eventually be a point where the frustrations of seeing political inanities triggers a chilling effect on new insightful submissions/comments, but I'd be surprised if we are there yet.

Let us hope. There's a lot of people here with very interesting takes on politics.

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