I’ve read enough of HN comments over the years and been in the industry even longer to know not to assume good faith. Sorry. Like I said, someone else flagged the comment, not me.

As a simple example when Kobe Bryant died there were numerous comments on the post saying “Why is this here? This shouldn’t be on Hacker News.” (Even though he was an angel investor). Yet when some random (to me) soccer player died a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t see a single “This doesn’t belong on Hacker News” comment. I looked for them. I also looked up the soccer player to find anything he did remotely related to HN. There was none.

It’s ok to accept that racist and sexist people exist, even on sites like Hacker News. After all, this is just Reddit, right?

Maybe his comment was just so wacky that it made me think this. Is there an article or something that references researchers thinking if statements are racist? Is this like an in-joke at a certain company? I just don’t get it.

What I do get is that lots of people will go out of their way to defend the writer of a _flagged_ comment.