It has nothing to do with nationalism. The PRC is a dictatorship that currently has millions of people in concentration camps undergoing reeducation, suppresses freedom of expression for its citizens, and crushes minority cultures.
You're not adding any information when you post like this. It's just a strong opinion with a strong feeling attached. When someone else with the opposite opinion comes along and blasts their opposite feeling, no interesting information will be exchanged. Therefore it's off topic for thoughtful conversation, which is what we're trying for here.
An HN thread thrives on curiosity and specifics, withers on the gruel of grandiosity, and fries under scorching rhetoric.
http://time.com/5366225/china-uighurs-detention-report/
A million Uyghur and Muslims in camps. That's a sixth of a Holocaust.
If you guys want to fling furious links around, you need to find another site to do it. It isn't part of thoughtful discussion—it's pure reflex.
If we aren't allowed to talk about and compare what the nazis did, how will we learn from it?
If this comparison is not permitted in this situation, when will it ever be?
Really quite disappointed in your stance on this one.
And please, spare us the condescending attitude that we don't actually care about this stuff. If we are going to veer off into "unstated positions and assumptions" territory there is a white hot glaringly obvious apparent conflict of interest with HN moderation shutting down discussion of human rights abuses right as YC china launches, dont you think?
We actually moderate HN threads less, not more, when YC is the topic—this is a longstanding principle on HN. But that doesn't mean we don't moderate them at all. You only need to read a small sample of the moderation comments we post to this site to see how consistent we are on these questions.
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
So tell us, Dan, how would one criticize the Chinese government for imprisoning dissidents and genocide, while staying within your guidelines? How must one couch it to pass the Great Firewall of Hacker News? Serious question.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
To the extent that people are fulminating rather than saying anything substantive, and reacting ideologically or tribally rather than thoughtfully, they're crossing outside the scope of what this site is for. Heated rhetoric, grandiose generalization, and angry name-calling are the kind of thing that mark this distinction. Your comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17764244 is an example of the kind of thing that clearly moves the needle into the red.
So, real talk, why do you think concerns over YC working with a government with super shaky human-rights record are unimportant or unfounded?
A valid answer is totally "Because we're gonna make money and nobody complaining is in a position to actually do anything."
What do you think about it?
The problem with bringing such links into arguments like this is that no one does so for reasons of intellectual interest. For example, in this case, people aren't actually interested in the plight of the Uighurs. Rather, it's convenient ammunition for justifying pre-existing political and national feelings. Such a move is not part of thoughtful conversation at all; it's just ideology and tribal loyalty, which explains why the discussions are so utterly repetitive—and therefore off topic for HN.