This, 100%.
It’s a technical post, let’s treat it as such and avoid insipid sensationalist distractions.
And every time it happens, more and more people find out. Streisand effect.
When I asked @dang a few years ago why Yarvin was banned, that was his response: in even technical posts related to Yarvin, his politics endlessly get brought up—and HN doesn't exist for that kind of discussion.
You can still see that happen in virtually any Urbit post, despite him not even being involved in it anymore.
If I were @dang, I would have allowed Yarvin links on HN (and Justine, obviously—amazingly talented engineer) and instead have a different HN policy: ask random HN posters to stop bringing up unrelated politics in the comments of technical posts.
Maybe @dang will do just that and we'll both be happy. It happens a lot and would make the site much, much nicer.
Please don't ban something because of an unrelated aspect of the author.
“If Stalin had a good writeup on programming, would linking that be dangerous, because some people might read it, start liking HIM, thus start liking communism and the ineviteble mass murder that follows it? Is this how little we trust other individuals when it comes to access to information? I personally trust my readers to have the ability to create their own opinions instead of blindly following whatever says the person they like.”
I have many people I dislike on a personal level, but still praise for their technical abilities.
> Tunney was never against the one percent—she just thought that the one percent were the wrong people.
If you want to excommunicate someone for this position, then you'll have to start doing rather a lot of banning.