https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang
There are Elon Musk + DOGE threads up and active and still taking new comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments
it's the relentless repetition that's mostly causing flagging.
Posted threads still appear on https://news.ycombinator.com/newest, even if [flagged] acttive threads appear on the RSS feed, and commenting is still visible on /newcomments.
"Buried" here really means that political threads aren't appearing on the front page of a primarily technical and industry news site.
There's still a lot of community discussion tacking place.
I wonder if it is bots, or perhaps some people are so invested (perhaps literally) in the Musk companies that they have a strong incentive to stop criticism?
Is your question something that can be answered and lead to greater understanding or is it not designed to be answered?
There is a type of thinking that deadens the mind and stops understanding. Some ideas are mind killers stopping any further thought. Many people in us vs them situations do not want to understand the other and in group psychology, understanding the other leads to a weaker group. Groups (e.g. politics) therefore are inherently against empathy with those outside the in-group.
One way I noticed I'm in a bubble is when I come up with my own explanations for others behaviour without wanting to actually interact and understand with them. Then I can begin to break down those borders and see myself in the other.
We are asked to be more thoughtful and kind on HN. How can we do this consciously? How can questions and discussions be created that encourage understanding between people?
I would speculate there are plenty of people who are horrified in terms of breach of procedures and protocols as the new installed govt tries to rewrite the rules, who could write a couple pages of serious implications in the aftermath when new management takes over in 4, 8 or however many years to redo all the things that were not done as per the US constitution and with regard to stringent security protocols - it'll cost a pretty penny. However to many such speculation on mass is not very interesting either.
There is no "pro-Musk" brigading going on and more to it, while important, the world does not revolve around America and its internal politics.
Some of these posts get flagged because the community feel like the matter has been sufficiently discussed and rather make room for other topics.
If you want to talk about those things, there are lots of other web sites - bigger and more important ones - where they are being discussed. Go for it.
From the flagging, I'd assume that plenty of people here want a refuge from all that useless talk and arguments and unhappiness.
Take a hint, people.
For example of stuff flagged on reaction, this post [1] (AI Startup School with Elon Musk, by ycombinator) was flagged for a long period of time and only recently got out of being flag-killed. A better example is this post by Krebs [2] which went deep into the history of one of the highlighted members of DOGE, their connection to cybercrime and more despite being well researched.
I think the way to describe it is that tech is going through the same political fracturing and reckoning as the rest of society. As hard as tech has tried to put on the facade of being apolitical, when you've got ycombinator inviting Elon Musk for talks or pg talking about the dangers of woke it was inevitable for HN to become more and more political over time.
As an aside, you should seriously consider why you think anything you don't like is a conspiracy against you. That kind of thinking is indicative of mental illness, and it's simply everywhere these days. Do some critical thinking.
In case you are an U.S. citizen, I wish you good luck living your life if everything around erodes. And before you ask, no, there is not a single bit of irony in this post, sadly.