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Comment by eanzenberg | Hacker News Reader

It's better than most but it's still a bubble that doesn't match the real-world.

There's a phrase for when an online forum becomes less of a bubble and more representative of the real world. It's called the Eternal September, and people usually aren't happy when it happens.

Yes, there are strong ideological echo chambers here. It is also left leaning.

Socially left-learning, sure (at least in some ways). But also a strong libertarian streak. And also an overwhelming white male bias. Not surprising given its primary audience.

> But also a strong libertarian streak.

Maybe that's just availability bias[0] but I feel that crowd has shrunken significantly over time.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22633747

That's in the eye of the beholder. Edit: here's a nice example in this very thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22706035.

I can give you a long list of links that say the opposite.

Edit: I can't help myself.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19194629

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16407769

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231654

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16750306

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17248326

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21220644

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21641004

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21316611

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17499061

Stop me before I link again.

> Stop me before I link again.

STOP :)

I would say it's a mix. Of course when it comes to health insurance or immigration for example it's left leaning. On the other hand YCombinator and VCs in part operate like banks. At least in the past very long working hours were somehow accepted. These are rather conservative ways to go.

When I first started lurking here, I would have agreed with you. As the community has grown, I'd say it's more center-right than center-left nowadays.

There's the unsurprising pro-business attitude that has a heavy libertarian lean, the 'don't tell me what I can and can't say, SJW' to the social commentary, lots of 'they need to work harder' attitude towards the less-fortunate, and also the 'government is always out to get us' conspiracy theorists have become more common. That sort of commenting has been around for a while, but it's really grown in recent years.

When I first started lurking here, I would have agreed with you. As the community has grown, I'd say it's more center-right than center-left nowadays.

Interesting. My subjective experience leads me to feel the progression has been exactly opposite of that. When I first started here, the site did seem somewhat libertarian leaning, pro-capitalism, pro-entrepreneurship, etc. (not to mention more optimistic and less cynical overall). But over time the prevailing zeitgeist here definitely seems to have shifted to a more anti-capitalist, pro-government, collectivism oriented outlook.

> a more anti-capitalist, pro-government, collectivism oriented outlook

As someone who meets that description and has been here for ~8 years, I've always felt that there's been an absolute dearth of anti-capitalists (communists, socialists, anarchists, etc) on HN. Could you point me to some examples (posts and/or members) who meet that description?

:-)

I personally have leftist tendencies, but avoid that on here because it's a one way ticket to your comment being nearly invisible. Plus its damn near useless when the consensus is "socialism is when the government does stuff" and socdems are labeled as full blown communists

Honestly, it's never occurred to me to keep a catalog of names & posts so that I could one day answer this exact question. And a lot of people that I might cite if I had time to spend hours trawling through the HN comment history might not self-identify as "anti-capitalist" or "leftist", or "socialist" or anything else.

That said, I absolutely feel like you see a lot more comments these days, that are generally negative towards capitalism and the libertarian mindset, compared to a few years ago. Look at almost any post mentioning Uber or AirBnB for example, and it will be filled with people saying "Uber made a business model out of breaking the law for profit" or "AirBnB should be more heavily regulated than they are", and so on and so on. And the comments that say things like "well, this is what you get with late stage capitalism", yadda, yadda... it all seems a lot more prevalent than in the past.

And, hey...I'm not even going to say that some of it hasn't been earned. Big tech companies have made more than a few decisions that have brought them a lot of enmity, and they should have known that would happen.

And getting away from the capitalism point, it seems to me that in these days it's much more likely that a post which comes off as "pro gun" or "anti taxation" will be quickly down-voted into oblivion.

Anyway, it's interesting that two different people can see the shift (if there is such a thing) in the HN zeitgeist so completely differently. I'm not sure what that tells us...

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