It's ironic and tragically funny that all the comments in support of this article's premise and of the successes of the current administration are being grayed out.
Example:
1 hour ago, user "remarkEon" posted something that was flagged, and then removed entirely, but before it was removed, the children comments gave hint that it included essentially: 'Many people with conservative views in general are being suppressed; it is not limited to people who speak out e.g. against minorities.'
I assume this because, the comments replying to it were essentially bashing it as if the onus was on remarkEon to provide examples substantiating his/her claim. As if the concept is so unfathomable.
For example, a child comment from user "notatoad" 1 hour stated (in full):
> Can you give even a single example of how the parent comment is a gross misrepresentation?
> Who is a conservative personality that's been silenced by a tech company but has never attacked minorities, equal rights, or promoted violence?
An early reply to that from user "itbeho" stated (in full):
> Just today...
> https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-22/james-woods-suspen...
"itbeho" was further grayed out. For providing exactly a requested example substantiating the statement that remarkEon was alluding to. And an example from /just today/.
All posters who were critical of the parent poster "remarkEon" were "in full view"--with black comments.
As with tech in general, we need particular users and/or moderators of HN to stop suppressing true statements of fact. Especially when there is a systemic, clear bias against a specific "political flavor" to the statements.
This is precisely the issue discussed in the linked article. Peoples' perspectives of reality are being warped by what is shown to them--and what is hidden from them. Certain facts are being suppressed, which creates an extremely distorted view of reality, e.g. real events and the rate at which they occur.
It said, verbatim, "The kind of gross misrepresentation you’re doing right now is part of the reason why Trump has found justification to do this kind of thing in the first place."
It wasn't flagged because it went against HN's political bias, it was flagged because it was tedious, partisan and uncivil, and threads like this are destined to become cesspools anyway.
> That said the primary “imbalanced exposure” seems to be due to evicting people who simply spend their time attacking minorities, attack equal rights, and promoting violence towards anyone that they dislike. For whatever reason the Republican Party seems to have decided that those people represent “conservative” views that private companies should have to support.
How is that also not "tedious, partisan and uncivil"? Not only is it not flagged, it's upvoted.
Maybe it shouldn't have been flagged, but it deserved to be downvoted.
Whether downvoted comments deserve to be edited out is another matter - I've been complaining about that for years but Hacker News is never going to change that. Unfortunately there's no way to downvote someone here without also censoring them globally, and HN is designed so that only a few downvotes have a massive effect on readability.
The parent comment by "olliej" presented absolutely no argument for their statements:
> That said the primary “imbalanced exposure” seems to be due to evicting people who simply spend their time attacking minorities, attack equal rights, and promoting violence towards anyone that they dislike.
> For whatever reason the Republican Party seems to have decided that those people represent “conservative” views that private companies should have to support.
Again, remarkEon was simply pointing out the fact that "olliej" _presented no argument_, and was giving another tired example of grossly misrepresenting conservatives. "olliej"'s comment literally was evidence for remarkEon's comment. A comment on the pathetic hypocritical state of discourse today.
(As a general statement,) I, and many others, only wish to have reasonable, rational discussions. It's impossible to do that when there exist people who seek to subvert those constructive discussions by simply branding people--who they very likely know next to nothing about--and then inferring all sorts of (incorrect) beliefs from those brands (e.g. "conservative"). We would all benefit from not jumping to conclusions. And from having access to the truth, undistorted.
That being said, remarkEon's comment was far from: "tedious, partisan and uncivil". That's ludicrous.
remarkEon was replying to a comment by user "olliej" which stated:
> the primary “imbalanced exposure” seems to be due to evicting people who simply spend their time attacking minorities, attack equal rights, and promoting violence towards anyone that they dislike.
This is a _blatant_ "tedious, partisan and uncivil" comment. remarkEon was pointing out _only_ that this is a "gross misrepresentation". Additionally, user "olliej" stated:
> For whatever reason the Republican Party seems to have decided that those people represent “conservative” views that private companies should have to support.
Again, remarkEon is entirely correct in pointing out another gross misrepresentation which is tedious, partisan, and uncivil.
If you attack remarkEon's comment as being the problem, rather than a statement pointing out the problem, you are sorely mistaken.
By the way, olliej's comment stands in full force; it has not been grayed out, and I don't have to turn on "showdead" to see it.