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Comment by _akei | Hacker News Reader

Did you just call Hacker News apolitical? I feel even Reddit is better when coming to political debates because on Reddit you can find a subreddit that aligns to your political ideology.

On HN, if you are from China, India, Russia, African country, the best thing you can do is to avoid articles about those geographical locations because comments will be mostly negative and any dissenting view will be downvoted until it becomes unreadable. It doesn’t matter if the view was free from strong language, it will be treated like it contains strong language.

At least on Reddit you can find a subreddit that aligns with your political and ideological views. Unlike here where you have to understand that your political views will be suppressed if it doesn’t align to the majority.

Every social network has a political agenda. If you don’t notice that agenda, know that it is because it aligns with your own political agenda.

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> avoid articles about those geographical locations because comments will be mostly negative

Comments on most topics skew negative. If you agree with something, that's not much reason to comment, but if you disagree, one angry comment coming straight up. That's not limited to the geographical regions you list; most threads on those have a subthread devolve into a discussion of US politics at some point.

> and any dissenting view will be downvoted until it becomes unreadable.

The comments that get downvoted until they become unreadable are mostly dissenting, but that doesn't mean dissenting views collect more downvotes than upvotes on average. When dang bans someone for making a single-purpose account for ideological battle, they usually have positive karma, often in the hundreds: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Single-purpose accounts that are in the black typically post more concerting or at least ambivalent comments than dissenting ones.

>On HN, if you are from China, India, Russia, African country, the best thing you can do is to avoid articles about those geographical locations because comments will be mostly negative and any dissenting view will be downvoted until it becomes unreadable.

I agree that downvoting for disagreement is bad, but have you considered you might simply be wrong? I strain to believe that anybody attacked you simply for being from Russia/China/Africa/whatever. They are attacking the regimes of those countries, not their population. These are two distinct things, and it's ridiculous to think that disliking a dictatorial government somehow means hostility towards the people themselves.

Uh-oh sorry the distinction is so not obvious in many thread. Consider some meme of the following: “We shouldn’t do any business with China and we should even sanction them. Do not buy anything Chinese made. Oh btw Chinese people it’s not against you guys just your government. I’m sorry if you don’t get any benefit or lose your income source”

In what universe does those views not mean hostility towards the people themselves. If you say that to any Native Chinese they’ll tell you it’s bullshit.

> but have you considered you might simply be wrong?

You don't have to be wrong to be downvoted, most of HN just has to feel you're wrong, and boy oh boy - can the HN group-think be wrong (even on facts)

Nonetheless, when defending the CCP, one is often wrong. CCP literally has rape-and-torture camps where people die suspiciously and graciously donate their organs.

With regard to african countries, it kinda matters which ones you're talking about: there's a world of difference between the DRC and Ghana.

Please don't take the thread further into nationalistic flamewar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

My comment is on andrepd's meta topic of: “I don't like that HNers tend to focus on negative or critical things about China, Russia, or Africa when these topics arise.”.

My comment is "new" in that, in this thread, what I've said was not yet said in response to this specific complaint. My comment is related to the thread, and not generic (it mentions the characters introduced by the parent thread [China, Africa, criticism thereof] by name). My basic point is that it's not surprising that HNers recall an apparent genocide in progress when talking about its location.

I have read those guidelines front to back at least ten times, Dan. I still can't predict how to predict what passes and what doesn't.

When people hurl personal abuse at me; they emerge unscathed.

When I criticize a political party's policy of genocidal prison camps, without criticizing any nation/people; it's deemed to contribute to "nationalistic flamewar". I take special care not to make a value judgement about any nations, and it's deemed to contribute to "nationalistic flamewar".

Strictly speaking, given that most things that people do occur inside, or relating to, nations: what criticism or affirmation of anything doesn't contribute to "nationalistic flamewar"?

I'm sorry I wasn't able to respond to this in depth. I hear the questions. There just isn't always time to give an in-depth response everywhere. You're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com, as long as you don't mind unpredictable response latencies.

I feel a downvote must only be used for a comment that has vulgar, strong language or anything that isn’t in the good spirit of a good debate. Downvotes must be used only to flag comments violating guidelines, not as a way to silence those who share differing views. If you disagree, write a comment. I realised most people use downvotes powers to silence those who disagree with them.

There's a flag button to flag comments violating guidelines, which actually silences people (unless you have showdead on). That downvotes exist as a separate, more easily accessible feature is a strong suggestion that they're intended to be used for more than just rule-violations.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314 for the official story.

I excluded Hacker News from social networks I'm in the market for. HN is political as hell, and yes, whenever I make a niche (on HN) political comment I'm always prepared to burn karma.

Thanks for clarifying. I am in the same boat. Whenever I go against ideologies of HN, I am always prepared to lose some karma also. I refuse to use a throwaway account.

As it should be. Politics done right means we can agree or disagree with each other, but otherwise still coexist in peace. As for burning karma, you can lose it when arguing either way, and in my experience, whether you lose or gain points depends primarily on a) the quality of your comment (as separate from contents), and b) whether it's the US or Europe that's awake at the time you post it.

I mean.. politics ought not to be an exercise in demanding conformity and punishing any non-standard thought.

Exactly.

What I like on HN is that, unlike some other communities I've observed, you can still gain votes when reasonably arguing on either side of the issue. The hive mind isn't as strong yet to defy all reason.

Didn't it change a lot in the last couple of years?

A few years ago I felt that I can speak freely, and in the worst case I wasn't upvoted.

Nowdays I feel much more like I need to choose my words very carefully.

Eh. I commented that "Chinese people are people too" the other day and got pretty heavily downvoted.

Are those downvoters expressing a reasoned belief that Chinese people aren't people? Or are they just reduced to a set of tribal motor reflexes with up and down arrows?

I'm actually kinda hoping it's the 2nd one rather than the first.

Oh come on now - don't pretend that comment was some neutral statement of fact. It was a clear implication of moral failure in your opponent's argument. And it's not really persuasive to then double down on a false dilemma (is my out-group evil, or just stupid?).

Think of it as a scissor statement.

Either it's the most mild, milquetoast statement possible or it's a declaration of war against Human Rights, Mom and Apple Pie.

I said "can", not "you always do". That said, context matters, and in the wrong context, a terse factual statement will be taken by almost everyone at anything but face value.

It is probably due that that phrase could be considered a negative commentary on CCP's take on human rights.

I've noticed that anything indicating a negative regarding China is squashed hard anymore on HN.

Yeah, that's called culture.

I've burned so much karma on political commenting that HN now limits me to about 5 comments a day, period.

I think there are some fairly minor functional changes that could be made to HN in order to address this problem. At very least it should not be possible to downvote a comment without replying or upvoting a reply.

If it's against the rules, flag it. If it's against your view of the facts, refute it.

> because on Reddit you can find a subreddit that aligns to your political ideology.

IMHO that makes Reddit worse for politics, not better.

I can tolerate HN's political stance because it fits into a predictable larger story. American tech company is obviously going to be very pro certain topics and against others. That's predictable and reliable.

The subreddit tyranny of anonymous moderators and punishingly overwrought hivemind is a less pleasant experience. Combine that with more extreme content in general than HN and it feels fundamentally less trustworthy and more manipulative.

If you don't like Python, or Tesla, or simply want to put a Paul Graham essay through the usual paces of critical inquiry, you're in a similar boat.

> Did you just call Hacker News apolitical?

I don’t think he did, at least what he wrote makes no judgement either way

This part made me to ask that question -> “HN notwithstanding”. it made me think he is excluding Hacker News from Ideologically/politically biased social networks.

Respectfully disagree about Reddit. I am not at all ideologically aligned with HN people, but somehow the ones I'm supposed to be aligned with on Reddit are so much more annoying, because of all the reasons that I usually critique as facile: echo chambers, complete lack of anything resembling objectivity, etc.

>At least on Reddit you can find a subreddit that aligns with your political and ideological views. Unlike here where you have to understand that your political views will be suppressed if it doesn’t align to the majority.

Maybe I'm seeing different things than you are, but when I see "alternative" view points being downvoted, it's not because their viewpoints are "wrong" it's cause the comment is pure shit, and contains logical fallacies and personal attacks out the wazoo.

This particular comment wags a finger at the community, and is essentially making the point that "nobody here listens to alternative viewpoints, and if you disagree with my comment, it's cause your own political agenda is biasing you." It basically dismisses offhand anyone who isn't completely on board with its ideology:

>Unlike here where you have to understand that your political views will be suppressed if it doesn’t align to the majority... If you don’t notice that agenda, know that it is because it aligns with your own political agenda.

I mean look at how the comment starts:

>Did you just call Hacker News apolitical?

Yes. We all read it. This whole, "your comment is so absurd that I have to question it," is condescending bullshit. Not everyone comes into the discussion with the same context as you, and condescending to people who may not see the world the same as you in this way turns off a lot of people here who are trying to be open minded to other view points.

You definitely get dinged a _point or two_ of karma when you have radical viewpoints (anyone who comments here knows this). But huge downvotes turning the comment invisible come when the comment is trash, not when the message is just so offensive to the community that everyone has to silence it.

> Not everyone comes into the discussion with the same context as you, and condescending to people who may not see the world the same as you in this way turns off a lot of people here who are trying to be open minded to other view points.

I’ve definitely seen people trying to share context, and they are called government-sponsored trolls by some and downvoted to oblivion. Then they get frustrated and make more sour/coarse comments and now they’re accused of not sharing context. It’s a negative feedback loop.

Just because you may not have engaged in it doesn’t mean certain opinions aren’t suppressed. (Now some will tell me those opinions are simply wrong and deserve to be suppressed. To which I have no answer. You can’t convince someone who’s already made up their mind.)

I'm from Russia and all the negative comments towards the Russian government's policies are fully deserved.

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