Hacker News Reader

Not everyone has the luxury to ignore news and politics. Sometimes these events touch our lives in ways that a new release of the Rust compiler could never.

(Not to pick on Rust, I love the language, but just an example)

I agree this site should not turn into Reddit, or Digg. What keeps HN great is the highly technical discussion around these topics. On mainstream articles like this I often skip reading the article, and go right to the HN comments to learn real info about the topic.

We have a community of some extremely smart people, let's not filter the articles posted, but instead harbor the intellectual conversation around the articles, because I think that's the real value of this site.

I agree with this, and will add:

Not everyone will see every thread on a topic. Some may only see a TSA thread on HN once a month or quarter, if they're a light user.

The repetition is indicative of the community's feeling a topic is important. And that's what people come here for. To see what this community thinks is important.

I'm genuinely curious: do you believe this post in particular to be controversial? I can't picture many people (I can picture some) who would think be in favor of what is described here.

I think a simple rule is this: if the topic has to do with the balance of liberty and security, it's going to be controversial.

But not necessarily because there's true dissenters in the simplified binary "you're with us or against us" way. But because it's a topic with no objectively right choice. Liberty is genuinely important. Security is too. Society and Government is largely about the balance of those two.

With any sentence that contains a "can't think of people who X" structure, you should realise that people you know and talk to are people who think like you. Exceptions don't break the rule, as always – if you do make a statement like that think first if your sample is representative of the population.

The issue is not about whether people "favor" the opion of the author or not, it is about whether the article meets the HN guidelines [1].

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Yes, I do. I think the fact that there is a very strong opinion for or against a political opinion makes it controversial, by definition. In effect, it means that any discussion on the subject is going to be charged and unbalanced. The more people are on one side of the debate, the more so.

This is perhaps why articles on, say, vaccine denialism or climate denialism and other strongly politicised subjects like that are not well received on HN. On the one hand there are very strong views around them, on the other hand it's very clear what those views are and where they come from after years of these "debates" raging online and there's really nothing to see there anymore.

Scientific controversy of course is another matter. That comes down to robust debate between experts from which everyone has a lot to learn. That sort of article is also commonly flagged on HN, which I think is unfortunate.

Anyway, I've contributed plenty of politically controversial articles myself in the past, and contributed to such discussions. Maybe I was wrong to do that. I don't know if there is a place on the internet where I would feel more comfortable than on HN to have such discussions- but maybe HN is still, just, not the right place for them. Edit: maybe, if we keep having more and more of those conversations on HN it will stop being the place where I feel comfortable having them.

But is your concern about controversy in this community or in general? HN substantially leans left/progressive (note that I did not say it was universally so). There are any number of articles posted here that take that view such as what to do about climate change, wealth, and speech. While these stories certainly get some long threads where that minority that isn't of the HN popular mindset go back and forth with those that are, by user counts these articles are not so controversial here as they would be across the broader public (remember, these are generalities that I am speaking in).

So should the general HN group tendencies be considered in what's considered controversial vs. what is just informative? Should the community focus on discussions in areas of climate, wealth, race, sex, etc. be limited only to the implementation details of the generally accepted HN point of view?

I do get what you're talking about. While I agree in with the premise of the parent story, the article is clearly written to charge emotions moreso that present rational arguments: I hate that bullshit. Personally, I'd prefer to be a member of a ruthlessly "on-topic" professional technology community where progressives, conservatives, etc. are expected to save their politics for Facebook or Twitter and provide input on those topics for which they are best qualified. Maybe it's too much to ask, though, because I ain't found such a forum yet.

HN has a small amount of absolutely brilliant content/commentary that I've not found elsewhere, as well as a larger dose of just OK content/commentary... which keeps me coming back... which comes with a large portion of utter crap which just becomes a big shit-show, and shows that this community of STEM types which, frankly, likes to see itself as superior to the less enlightened, broader public, really isn't any better at formulating ideas than that public in areas outside their specific specialties. Oh, sure, the better education means the quality of writing and rhetorical flare is also better... but that doesn't mean that the actual ideas are less emotionally driven or more well considered: just that the rationalizations are more nuanced than they might otherwise be.

OK, stepping off the soap box. I will say, for my part, I use to get much more caught up in the political discussions here and was wrong to do so. I've stopped that bad behavior for the most part: I wasn't helping, I wasn't changing minds, I was simply eroding the professional demeanor of the community.

>> But is your concern about controversy in this community or in general?

About this community in particular.

The topic of the article is interesting, as it highlights a particular trend in technology and raises a lot of stimulating questions. But upon reading the article itself, I find that it's very political in nature and uses emotive kind of speech. It provides very little actual information beyond the title. Personally, I think the article is a waste of time and I'm actually shocked that it received so many upvotes.

I don't like it, and maybe HN is not best suited, but it is relevant. Sharing such news is the only way of taking the pulse of how authorities perceive technology. Police using AI and visual recognition, investigations of social media accounts, drones starting to be used in cities. The only reason this feels like "repetition" is because we don't seem to be able to do anything about it, but discuss it as it unravels.

I agree. If an article doesn't meet the guidelines [1], then please don't upvote it.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm more concerned that conspiratorial content and clickbait bullshit is becoming king on HN. This site and the general writing/editorial style fires off massive warning sirens and when I tried to look up the site further, most of the links that followed were similar conspiracy sites.

Now don't get me wrong, this is separate from the issue of privacy and ensuring that the government doesn't overstep its bounds. We shouldn't be lured in by people using that as a wedge to spread FUD. Just read the comments on the article by the same writer to understand why.