I think I’m done with HN | Hacker News Reader

I think I’m done with HN

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> while any mention of the fate of George Floyd and so many others who have suffered and died at the hands of police gets aggressively removed from discussion

That's not even close to true—not by orders of magnitude. This seems like a classic of the notice-dislike bias (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...): that is, you've seen things that you didn't like in one discussion and weighted it more heavily than everything else, including the by-far-most-discussed theme of the last month.

That bias is so powerful that I'm not sure I've seen even a single counterexample, and it seems to make objective assessment impossible. I don't know what to do about it. We can't remove everything that somebody dislikes—there would be nothing left—but the presence of material that people dislike makes them draw extremely distorted conclusions. I believe this is an outcome of HN being a non-siloed site. Most other places on the internet, you choose your silo so you're surrounded by friendly views and don't encounter so many nasty things. Here, everyone's in one silo and it creates a shock experience. This leads people to dramatically false conclusions, but it doesn't matter because they feel intensely true. I wrote about this recently here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.

Sorry for the wall of links, but I want it to be clear that HN has had massive discussion about George Floyd, BLM, the protests, police brutality, race relations in the US, and related topics. I bet we'd have to go back to Snowden/NSA in Summer 2013 to find anything comparable.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23614128 was on the front page all day today. Edit (12 hours later): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23628394 is on the front page now. Below is a sample of other major threads on these topics. There are many more, but I suppose 52 is enough to make the point.

There are over 15k comments in these 52 threads alone. Let's double that and guess that there have been 30k comments on George Floyd-related themes. (I think that's conservative, since I came up with these 52 threads by ad hoc searching and there have been many others.) There have been 283k total comments on HN since George Floyd was killed, so if my guess is reasonable then over 10% of the comments on HN have been on these themes. On a site that seeks to avoid repetition, that is beyond massive.

For comparison, I picked the most popular technical topic I could think of, which is Rust. There have been 2664 comments on posts with 'Rust' in the title over the same time period—an order of magnitude less. When you're 10x bigger than Rust on HN, and someone calls that "aggressively removed from discussion", we seem to have left behind shared reality.

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Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23604277 - June 2020 (232 comments)

‘BlueLeaks’ Exposes Files from Hundreds of Police Departments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23599081 - June 2020 (343 comments)

NYC passes POST Act, requiring police department to reveal surveillance tech - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23586791 - June 2020 (91 comments)

Nextdoor ends its program for forwarding suspicions to police - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23586228 - June 2020 (121 comments)

U.S. Watched George Floyd Protests in 15 Cities Using Aerial Surveillance - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23579438 - June 2020 (59 comments)

Navigating the Venture World as a Black VC - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23564048 - June 2020 (75 comments)

FBI used Etsy, LinkedIn to make arrest in torching of Philadelphia police cars - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23556608 - June 2020 (376 comments)

‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police interaction, sends location - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23544749 - June 2020 (101 comments)

For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23540162 - June 2020 (775 comments)

After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23528224 - June 2020 (790 comments)

George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23522602 - June 2020 (794 comments)

Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23504445 - June 2020 (313 comments)

Microsoft won’t sell police its facial-recognition technology - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23491226 - June 2020 (53 comments)

Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23488307 - June 2020 (852 comments)

Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23484574 - June 2020 (293 comments)

Police have been spying on black reporters and activists for years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23482979 - June 2020 (153 comments)

Wikipedia became a battleground for racial justice - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23474974 - June 2020 (23 comments)

Why filming police violence has done nothing to stop it, so far - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23467912 - June 2020 (29 comments)

Transcribed police scanners in real-time - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23461607 - June 2020 (105 comments)

Protests about police brutality are met with wave of police brutality across US - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23445980 - June 2020 (71 comments)

Americans' perceptions of police drop significantly in one week - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23443410 - June 2020 (250 comments)

Facebook limits spread of 'Boogaloo' groups amid protests - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442294 - June 2020 (97 comments)

If you see the cops, start recording - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23432463 - June 2020 (256 comments)

Why So Many Police Are Handling the Protests Wrong - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23428606 - June 2020 (107 comments)

The Unmarked Federal Agents Occupying Washington, D.C - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23428432 - June 2020 (158 comments)

Signal app downloads spike as US protesters seek message encryption - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23424245 - June 2020 (356 comments)

CIA veterans who monitored crackdowns see parallels - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23415447 - June 2020 (63 comments)

How much do we need the police? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23409370 - June 2020 (464 comments)

ACLU sues Minnesota for police violence against the press - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23406844 - June 2020 (247 comments)

A Git Repo to Document Police Brutality During the 2020 George Floyd Protests - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23399533 - June 2020 (254 comments)

DEA authorized to conduct surveillance on protestors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23397868 - June 2020 (313 comments)

Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393914 - June 2020 (768 comments)

Lawmakers begin bipartisan push to cut off police access to military-style gear - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23392393 - June 2020 (324 comments)

The business of tear gas - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23391669 - June 2020 (214 comments)

Thousands are monitoring police scanners during the George Floyd protests - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23390707 - June 2020 (192 comments)

White nationalist group posing as antifa called for violence on Twitter - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23386626 - June 2020 (225 comments)

De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23385741 - June 2020 (721 comments)

Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23385727 - June 2020 (117 comments)

The Police Data Accessibility Project - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23384556 - June 2020 (90 comments)

George Floyd died of asphyxia, private autopsy finds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23382954 - June 2020 (52 comments)

Facebook employees stage virtual walkout in protest of company’s stance - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23382573 - June 2020 (81 comments)

As Qualified Immunity Takes Center Stage, More Delay from SCOTUS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23379910 - June 2020 (313 comments)

How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23379397 - June 2020 (396 comments)

Police act like laws don't apply to them because of Qualified Immunity - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23373329 - May 2020 (133 comments)

Caught on camera, police explode in rage and violence across the US - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23371048 - May 2020 (114 comments)

Image Scrubber: tool for anonymizing photographs taken at protests - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23369873 - May 2020 (379 comments)

Surveillance tools used by the Minneapolis Police Department - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23355572 - May 2020 (177 comments)

US customs and border protection is flying a surveillance drone over Minneapolis - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23352785 - May 2020 (412 comments)

CNN reporter arrested live on air while covering Minneapolis protests [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23349294 - May 2020 (344 comments)

CNN team arrested by Minnesota police on live television - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23348464 - May 2020 (31 comments)

Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347155 - May 2020 (1467 comments)

I do not know how this is perceived in the US but for us, Europeans, BLM, main is the new master and other similar things seem to be all over the place.

Everywhere, including HN.

I do not mind, the tech scene is understandibly americanized but telling that the discussions are hidden is simply not true.

(to be clear, I am just piggy backing on your quote to not repeat it, I agree with what you say)

I am pretty confused. What kindof discussion is expected? Searching for "police" or "BLM" on the site brings up many heavily commented threads.

Do they know the site has a search function? I didn't for a while. There's a search box on the bottom of the page

On some of those peak days of BLM protests, I came on here and it was like the whole thing wasn't happening. It did seem strange.

If nothing else people here should stop pretending they're above the zeitgeist. How many others remember the slashdot threads on 9/11, for example? This is a big defining moment in our times worth more conscious observance. Tech cares too.

I noticed the silence of HN too. Was looking for some level headed discussions on the topic. Then what I recalled was around March onset of shutdown, HN was posting some things about funding startups in the space (being part of the covid solution). I was expecting to see something similar for startups that could improve race relations in some way, was interested in how technology/startups could be a part of the solution. chirp chirp

For the boring technical solution, read https://hckrnews.com/ . There's loads of political posts on HN.

Maybe HN (and the web) has become less US-centric and more global? In Europe the issue is marginal to say the least, in Asia I believe they don't even consider it news-worthy, and so on. The opposite of "defining" for most of the planet.

Weren’t Europeans on the street marching in solidarity? I wouldn’t dismiss it entirely as a US issue.

Global solidarity demos against racism gets lost on US-only centrism.

Those of us in browsing HN and tech news in India find the inundation of BLM posts unrelatable. Tech and product is something people across the world can relate to. US-centric political issues are not.

HN is heavily moderated by users and mods, so you get to see what content according to site policy, mostly.

If you want all the stories, there's https://hckrnews.com/ sorted by time. Lots of politics gets through enough to follow the zeitgeist, without getting forever lost, like this guy.

“Tech cares too”?

What does that even mean?

That’s the sort of sweeping generalization about a group of people that racists make.

It means we are human beings and current events are relevant to us. We are not above it. It is not an irrelevant topic somehow beneath us.

Our professions, our tendency towards rational view of the world, should not be a mechanism to deny reality and put ourselves on pedestals, to create distance with other human beings. When we dismiss a major event as not relevant to tech that is what we are doing. I see it as somewhat egotistical.

So, you feel that every single niche forum must be discussing this or they're not being human?

What if this were a body building forum or a site where chefs and their kitchen cooks talk shop?

Would you feel the same way about the users of those sites?

I'm sure plenty of people in tech don't really give a shit as is their right.

> Would you feel the same way about the users of those sites?

Yes, it would not at all be unreasonable for any of those categories. If they are seeing it all over the place as we all are, having intense reactions as many people are and extend the sentiment into their niche forums that seems totally legit and reasonable.

I suppose you have a right to be a grumpy person and deny them it, but, I would say relax, give them a break, and maybe stop taking yourself so seriously.

Note that there's a function available to view the historic frontpage content on HN for a given date:

https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=YYYY-MM-DD

As someone who is not American, the BLM issues while important are not really something which I see needing to dominate every form of media I consume, especially those dedicated to more technology related issues.

It is also nice to have a broad range of topics which are intellectual based also. Given the emotional nature of the protests, it wouldn't be surprising that if such a topic was left unmoderated it would lead to a lot of mirrored content and information.

There are plenty of appropriate places to talk about BLM and other world events. Just because the community here may not be focused on it doesn't make it a bad community. Frankly, when sociological discussions show up here it's kind of awkward.

Perhaps they're awkward because they're unpracticed.

In most tech threads, the top comments are often those with an insider opinion or "back in my day" tale. A sociological thread doesn't typically lend itself to those. And I assume HN has a far smaller proportion of experts (and less motivation to snag that ego boost from flaunting wisdom) on the trending topics (e.g. black persons and other victims of police brutality) than it would for, say, such-and-such Ruby feature.

There is no community, just a weird amorphous group that stands between other conspecifics and mods who flag and silence posts they don't like.

As a younger person, I agree, it is very disappointing. I would've guessed YC more prescient than to not realize there are tectonic cultural shifts heavily worth deep discussion happening.

I've noticed that sometimes, when people rise through ranks or otherwise mature in the world of business, they become disconnected from regular humanity and forget that emotions are real signals.

(since this whole story is flagged)

As an older person, this is another iteration of the same shit and unfortunately nothing will change.

Part of the reason it won't change is that a bunch of upper-class white people try to make it all about their sociological theories instead of the really simple premise of "cops aren't accountable and that's not ok". They're spending their effort going after Scott Alexander, who's generally on their side on this stuff, for his insufficient group loyalty. It's a total self-own, constantly from these people, and it plays right into the cops' hands.

We're up against a lot of resistance and there's no room for selfishness like that.

Yea anti-racism is a modern religion. It's counterproductive, and I expect a net-negative backlash than useful reform and change. No longer is it ok to affirm the human dignity and the equality of minorities. Racism is assumed globally so the question now becomes how is a person instantiating racism, not if a person is instantiating racism. It's screwed up and bizarre.

It's especially screwed up and bizarre because this whole fuzzy, religious outlook thoroughly obscures the relevance of real, actual, systemic racism in the workings of institutions like criminal justice (including policing) in the United States. Here you have the clearest argument for systemic racism being a real dynamic even in a developed, largely-free country like the U.S. (and presumably it's no coincidence that CRT, from which we get this notion in the first place, originated from a subfield of legal studies), and yet you probably wouldn't know this from looking at the progressive debate on this issue, which simply sticks to its meaningless, mindless religious tropes. Quite mind-boggling.

That might be a possible explanation, except the facts are the opposite: HN has had dozens of extensive discussions about these topics, with tens of thousands of posts. The claim that they've been suppressed or ignored is beyond wrong—they are the most discussed topics in the last month. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962 for an extreme list of examples.

I always ask myself how people arrive at these perceptions in the first place, and what makes them so sure that they're right that they will make rage posts about it on e.g. Twitter without even a small effort to find out the truth. Any ideas? Here are my theories: (1) we are much more likely to notice the things we dislike, and to weight them much more heavily, than the things we like or agree with—so people on all sides end up feeling like this community is against them; (2) everyone always feels like the stories they care the most about are under-represented on HN, no matter how well-represented they actually are—this is an artifact of frontpage space being so scarce.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Not sure why anybody's upset that HN didn't have much discussion on, above anything, George Floyd. HN discourages (and always discouraged) "me too" style remarks, like "Oh that's awful", "that's outrageous", or "that's gross injustice!" But exactly what other reasonable opinions are available here?

I mean, would you want to see people discussing here whether Derek Chauvin was justified in killing George Floyd? Because I don't.

I think there's a lot more to discuss other than Derek Chauvin's culpability. HN is full of really bright people; I'd love to hear what they think about tech's role in enabling police brutality like this to exist, and what is in our capacity to do to help solve the problem.

And if I search for "police" I see 5 discussions with 100+ comments in the past week alone! So I think there's a lot of discussion regarding police brutality, just not about Floyd's murder itself. (Well, I guess some people might wish HN had even more discussion on police brutality, but we're veering into meta-meta-discussion.)

In that case you may be glad to see how many major discussions like that HN has hosted in the past few weeks.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962

Sorry not to have listed the titles, but there are many tech-overlapping threads in there, and many more that I didn't list. HN Search can help—for example:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

I don't think there are enough threads on HN saying that vegans are right, and evil egg-eating vegetarians are wrong. Therefore, I have concluded that HN is a den of evil egg eaters. I just don't feel safe reading opinions of people who have their moral compass compromised in this way.

So I think I too am done with HN.

Done with caring about comments here that aren't links to resources. Karma system is dysfunctional, and socialization here isn't too meaningful coupled with the guidelines. I'm about to lose points, but as far as I am concerned real community here is dead. But I respect the decision to leave.

https://hckrnews.com/ or use search

There's been about a thread a day about BLM. There's been one thread, one day about Scott Alexander.

Probably upset mods are effective, and can't be bothered to search or use https://hckrnews.com/

Flag this accordingly.

"And I think I’m done with it" and posts on HN. This topic was discussed to death - right now the story right under this is another tech company yielding to the speech police mob by doing another master branch rename. This topic has suffocated anything of relevance in the last weeks.

> anything of relevance

What about this discussion is not relevant? I remember HN getting over COVID about a month ago too.

It's against the rules for one - but those only apply to some.

All stories by time https://hckrnews.com/ and search. The final sorted daily list ofc won't go against site policy. Lots of these political stories each day though, some of them heavily posted.

> Appeal to authority with internet points

> Moan that HN won't support you spilling your politics that already fill your twitter feed over into the site, despite many alternatives existing

> Recognize it's a free site and it can do what it wants

> Assert it's wrong, and doing wrong, by disagreeing with you, that voice of karma-provided authority

> Post your Twitter rant to HN for attention

> HN democratically removes your rant

> Whimper on Twitter that HN, the site you're apparently done with, aren't facilitating your anti-HN rants, implicitly encouraging your following to do some bandwagoning

God only knows what drama this person would be capable of if HN kowtowed and facilitated their self-approved topics for discussion.

Why ask for Reddit 2.0 when you can just stick to Reddit.com?

Indeed. This is a stripped down tech news aggregator for niche audiences.

A thread or two on big cultural trends of the day makes sense but this isn't reddit or twitter.

I see the opposite; I think there are too many posts and comments about BLM. They are also heavily skewed in support of the movement, so anything skeptical gets flagged/downvoted.

It seems like this user demands a silo where his views are not questioned. Certainly HN is better without people like that.

That's the unfortunate reality of the tech community and really privilege itself. It's uncomfortable to acknowledge the misfortunes of others. It's a sad norm of American culture, especially when it pertains to black people.

Agreed. Its constituents should endeavor to change that similar to how broader society is doing so around it.

I agree with you about it being uncomfortable to acknowledge the misfortune of others. We could go deeply into that question. But I hope you're aware that the claims the OP made are not true at all—HN has had dozens of threads and tens of thousands of comments on the cluster of topics related to George Floyd (BLM, protests, police brutality, racism). This has been the most-discussed theme of the past month by far, supplanting coronavirus, and 10x more discussed than any of the most popular technical topics.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962

Oh wow, this made it to the front page and it just got flagged! I was going to say how i really don't care about mainstream news topics worming their way to HN but man, this is crazy. I understand downvotes and bans but flagging this and shadowbans are hitting below the belt.

Is this site for the intellectually dishonest? If not this b.s. needs to stop. How many "I quit facebook" posts make it to the front page all the time? How many social activism related topics make it to the front page. Counter argument to those who say it's not relevant: technology made these protests possible and technlogy is where the fight is happening right now.

I hope the moderator team (@dang) pays attention to this.

Unfortunately users will flag content they don’t like.

Which restricts freedom of speech in an arbitrary, unlawful manner.

See e.g https://dejure.org/dienste/vernetzung/rechtsprechung?Gericht... or https://www.mondaq.com/germany/social-media/735562/munich-co...

This twit is blaming effective mods instead of using search or https://hckrnews.com/ You'll find lots of interesting posts about police and george if you bother.

I did pay attention, because the OP's claims are false. When people say false things about HN and try to gin up outrage with them, I unfortunately feel obliged to respond.

If you haven't seen these comments, and are willing to read them, I'd be curious to hear if you feel like there's anything that remains unaddressed. I listed 52 threads but it could just as easily have been 102.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624916

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962

Since you mention intellectual honesty: do you think the OP or any of the people who jumped to the same false conclusions will correct anything? I would be surprised if they did, even though acknowledging a mistake of this nature is the bare minimum that intellectual honesty requires.

Edit: on reflection, that last bit crossed a line and I owe the OP an apology. It's one thing to go on about intellectual honesty in general but there was a specific person in the mix and I should have left more room for the possibility that I was misunderstanding him, especially since I know how easy that is on the internet. I was doing the very thing I was complaining about—jumping to conclusions! Sometimes it takes a while to realize this, but it's embarrassingly obvious now. I've told the OP that I'm sorry, and want to say so publicly also.

I completely agree with your point about admitting mistakes. I am not invested either way on the topic. Either we have a discussiom thread informing OP, myself and others of their mistakes or we don't. That's what downvotes are for. We see clickbait topics make it to the front page all the time but the top comment calls out the article's misleading claims. I've been corrected from holding incorrect beliefs as a result of misleading articles or blog posts on HN. Voting works.

What I didn't like was the constant flagging. And censorship. It's not ok to allow a "i quit facebook" post where commenters discuss the factual nature of the authors reasoning and at the same time ban/censor an "I quit HN" post. I have no problem with downvotes but when a post gets popular enough to make it to the front page and gets removed because it contains incorrect claims the result is people like me who didn't care much about the topic before but the fact the authord HN censorship claim was validated before my eyes made me believe him. Censorhsip does not correct false claims (streissand effect).

I would like to see all popular posts and read commentors opinions so I can make up my own opinion (short of spending time researching the accuracy of every claim for every post first hand).

I hope HN will allow that but I do understand this is a private topic specific platform.

So you don't like it when people accuse you unjustly either. I can understand that.

It's more about people accusing HN unjustly. The structure of the forum leads people to false conclusions very easily—I wrote about this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098. It's easy for people to get stuck in a negative distortion which doesn't benefit anybody.

We can look at and acknowledge the problems on HN—certainly there are many problems—and at the same time see that there is also something unusually creative and positive at its core. I think the way for this positive core to develop further is for the community to get a more accurate reflection of itself.

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