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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

This is fantastic news; I say this as a liberal knowing that some of my conservative friends feel exactly the same way.

Having said that:

I flagged this story. It doesn't belong here. I highly recommend people read Radley Balko's blog --- he's a staunch libertarian former editor at Reason, and someone with whom I don't generally share a lot of political opinions --- and encourage others to read it as well. He's amazing.

But I would never post a Balko story here, because they're just not appropriate for HN.

Flagged.

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But I would never post a Balko story here, because they're just not appropriate for HN.

Flagged.

I don't understand why this wouldn't be appropriate for HN. Could you explain what you mean?

This isn't /r/politics, it's HN. Politics stories that aren't huge major news don't belong here, it's as simple as that.

That's a great guideline (hence why it's listed as such), but it's far from a hard and fast rule. This is a case that directly affects technology-related constitutional rights and is of high interest to hackers. I fail to see what about that doesn't belong here.

This topic is 1 rhetorical hop away from identity politics.

In the best case, you end up with hackers arguing with each other about how they should be taxed.

In the worst case, you end up with hackers arguing with each other about who is most genuinely outraged.

To quote 'pg, explaining why TSA stories were so dangerous to HN that he was explicitly penalizing them: "If there's a road from hacking to politics, it's probably civil liberties."

Let's run through a thought experiment. How easy would it be for you to replicate the ensuing political discussion in another forum or in real life with coworkers/friends? For most people, fairly easy. I had several such discussions today alone. In contrast, the occasional valuable discussion that still takes place on HN is reasonably difficult to replicate in other online forums and has a high cost for replication in real life (time of smart people is valuable and much cheaper when done async online). Not to mention that PG essentially banned run-of-the-mill politics on HN from the start, but the guidelines are unfortunately vague and haven't withstood the test of time.

Therein lies my reasoning for my dislike of politics on HN. Thomas may have different reasoning.

It's definitely not typical HN fare, but I think privacy and one's rights pertaining to media are very relevant to the web and of concern to many readers on HN.

Someone has said that about almost every political story that ever got flagged off this site.

The question then becomes: Is there any political story (not explicitly startup related) that should not be flagged off of HN?

I'm not sure - but if that's the policy I think it should be clearer.

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