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Comment by verisimi | Hacker News Reader

What's with all the flagged and dead comments?

Reading them, they mostly seem acceptably divergent political opinion, nothing that worrisome imo.

IMHO, HN would be much better if any discussion with a hint or politics in them were not allowed, with the focus going back to purely technological discussion. The political climate right now is absolutely toxic right now, right now all it does is drive out any actual discussion of technology.

Avoiding or banning politics is itself a political position: in favor of status quo.

(If political discussions quickly become uncivil, that is a separate issue solved like with any other uncivil discussion.)

I think the incentive structures created by adding the concept of voting and flagging posts destroy the possibility of productive conversation long-term. If a user can control the visibility of opinions with less effort than defeating those opinions through debate then that mode of operation will end up dominating. Throw in enough users who have similar beliefs within this incentive structure and you start seeing some narratives promoted through upvotes and others hidden through downvotes and flagging. HN obviously has some magic sauce and wonderful moderators to try and prevent this, but I think they're fighting a losing battle just like every other online forum with similar mechanics.

There is a reason “Most stories about politics […] unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon” is the first guideline about what not to post on HN.

Political discussions quickly lead to polarization and abuse of the vote system. Doesn’t help that 90% of comments are simply parroting known opinions and not offering anything of particular interest for most readers.

True, politics tends to amplify this problem quite a bit as people tend to be very emotionally invested. I have absolutely noticed this same phenomenon at work in non-political stories though and the problem seems to be getting worse, although that is just from personal observation. Hence why I said that long-term these incentive structures dictate behavior; they don't manifest immediately and simultaneously.

welcome to the wonderful experience of political discussions on hacker news

The mods like to pretend that diverse perspectives are always welcome, flags are only for guidelines. Definitely not true. If your opinion falls too far out of the HN overton window you’re silenced.

I'm never as careful about what I say as I am on Hacker News.

Sad that free speech has been unceremoniously tossed out of the Overton window, and aggressive censorship is so widely seen as the right way to deal with bad ideas.

It's atonishing that political discussion is even allowed in _Hacker_ News. What is the rationale?

I've been feeling kinda edgy today, might have made some people more trigger happy than usually.

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