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Comment by eganist | Hacker News Reader

Considering the high-profile nature of their partnership as it pertains to the Gates Foundation as well as potential down-stream impacts e.g potentially around which projects are picked up by the foundation, strategic philanthropic decisions, etc., this post would seem to be pretty relevant to the HN community.

Please stop flagging it.

Feel free to downvote me for complaining about the flags, but don't flag the post. No, I'm not OP.

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No, it isn't. It literally is just mainstream news and celebrity gossip, with nothing to stimulate intellectual curiosity, nothing related to technology, and no new or interesting phenomenon worth discussing. It's bad enough we have to entertain obituary threads but this is a bridge too far.

Two rich people got divorced. Who cares? Flag it into the ground.

> No, it isn't. It literally is just celebrity gossip, with nothing to stimulate intellectual curiosity, nothing related to technology, and no new or interesting phenomenon to discuss. It's bad enough we have to entertain obituary threads but this is a bridge too far.

No...... It's literally a tweet from their verified account. It's literally the exact opposite of gossip; it's their official announcement, and this thread provides room for readers here to analyze the effects of the split in our technical, entrepreneurial, and philanthropic context

You know what's gossip? r/relationship_advice, which this isn't. (discl: I run the subreddit)

Please contribute positively.

I contributed my flag and downvotes.

And fair enough, it's not gossip. Celebrity news still doesn't belong here.

it's also a textbook example of how to announce such news in a positive way (together and without dragging each other to hell).

This is not gossip. It's about as official as you can get.

> It's bad enough we have to entertain obituary threads

It seems your personal relevancy radar is out of sync with the larger HN community. Not a problem in itself, but probably not something you should get up in arms about.

Plenty people saying it shouldn't be flagged, but then not actually commenting on the substance? Why not, if it is relevant?

Largely because the flagging consumed the oxygen in the room. But there are still comments talking about potential outcomes.

My main concern is around whether the foundation ends up splitting from its current areas of focus (climate change and disease research). There's been a wealth of innovation around both as a consequence of GF's investment and I worry that less focus might mean less funding at a critical time for both.

I agree that the post isn't flag-worthy, but I don't think the content is very relevant to the community either. Although the Gates Foundation and Microsoft share the same founder, the former is nothing like the latter.

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