Hacker News Reader

Comment by dingnuts | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

Which side do you think HN promotes and which side do you argue it shuts down? I've seen plenty of both very left leaning and right leaning people say this, so I wonder which one you are.

In an echo chamber bad posts from one side stays up and gets upvoted, while posts from the other side gets extremely high standards. I don't see that on HN, but a lot of people who are used to being in an echo chamber can think seeing bad posts from their side getting downvoted means this is an echo chamber, when it is the other way around.

Maybe rather than shutting down one or the other side of the progressive/conservative spectrum, it shuts down anything too extreme on the radical/incrementalist spectrum.

If you say the only answer is a revolution, or if you say any potential solution is moving too fast, and we need to take way more time to consider the situation, you probably get less support regardless of which side of the traditional left/right divide you're championing.

While HN has a left-lean to it, that’s more due to the userbase being from mostly left-wing areas. I have seen quite a few users voicing what would be considered right-wing opinions, even just yesterday or so. Unfortunately some particular people view HN as an extension of Reddit, however, so there can be some leakover from there (which I would argue is an objective echo chamber due to the sheer amount of censorship regarding dissenting opinions and the fact that there are so many “supermods” with similar political leanings).

I cannot speak for MetaFilter, but Wikipedia has a long-standing history of denying factual information in favor of the “accepted view”, particularly on social issues, and uses its “only accepted sources” to abstract this bias away (despite the double standard application of said rule).

One side being the majority doesn't make it an echo chamber though, every forum will have one side that is more prevalent than the rest but as long as the other sides are still allowed to post and get upvoted to the top when they make good points it isn't an echo chamber.

I see both conservative and progressive points get upvoted to the top in different threads, that is strong evidence that this isn't an echo chamber. On r/politics I never see right wing opinions get upvoted to the top, and on r/conservative I never see progressive opinions get upvoted to the top, that suggests those two are echo chambers unlike here.

What side does HN promote and censor?

The side of truth is usually promoted and the side of lies is usually censored. Despite what some people may think, truth and lies are not of equal merit.

Yes, that is the false-balance logical fallacy... Which seems to be the singularity around which people are circulating in this conversation. That's not to say that popularity of a certain view can't result in the suppression of those holding an opposing view, but what people seem to forget is one of those perspectives will actually be closer to the truth than the other (except rarely, when they are both off the mark by a long shot).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com