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Comment by sctb | Hacker News Reader

> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

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with respect, as a non US citizen this whole article to me is deeply offensive. I/we are being targeted simply because we are second class citizens on the web. Good enough to have our data extracted by US corps but our rights are trampled on. This is the essence of it yet you're accusing me of flame-baiting? Please reflect for a minute on how just this is to anyone who has never (and will never) step/ped foot in the US. Simply saying what I say here might mean I'm being persona-non-grata and harassed at your airports[1]. All of you should reflect on this the next time you come shopping to Europe or take your SO on honeymoon to Paris, Berlin & Milan.

[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/28/mozilla_dev_and_cur...

It's flamebait because it's not a new critique, and it's tangential to the article. So it's likely to attract people trying to rebut your critique, but neither your argument not the rebuttal would add anything new.

If there was a thread about someone discussing us spying methods and policies against non-us citizens, your comment would not be flamebait. See the difference?

most comments are thoughts and opinions and only few provide new critique. The OP comment here, though presented in an obnoxious way, is new critique because no one else has discussed the civil liberty bias deployed by agents. Though the OP presents this in an offensive way, which is maybe breaking a different rule than just "new critique"

That's what happens when you are on someone else's web. So far, China is the only one deciding they are unhappy enough with the arrangement to build their own web, but the option exists for any country, or even non-geographically-bound organization if you are willing to tolerate shitty satellite connections.

Accusations of flamebait and similar on HN are a form of censorship, to prevent the community from having to confront difficult issues and “keep the peace” — not legitimate regulation of tone.

No, it's just to keep this site from becoming boring. Difficult issues are most welcome—just say something substantive that we can learn from.

that's the feeling I sometimes get. Let's all go back and discuss microservices and virtualization and keep pretending technology is neutral. Because if we were actually to confront these issues we might actually get somewhere.

I have said shit before that I regretted and where I have rightly been put in place. The above comment isn't one of them though. Also I'm not a robot so maybe feeling something when I read this scoop is my own fault. idk

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